"I remember. Them girls pretend to be dressmakers."

"They _are_ dressmakers," said Mrs. Larkins across the room.

"I _will_ take a glass of sherry. They 'old to it, you see."

He took the glass Mrs. Johnson handed him, and poised it critically
between a horny finger and thumb. "You'll be paying for this," he said
to Mr. Polly. "Here's _to_ you.... Don't you go treading on my hat,
young woman. You brush your skirts against it and you take a shillin'
off its value. It ain't the sort of 'at you see nowadays."

He drank noisily.

The sherry presently loosened everybody's tongue, and the early
coldness passed.

"There ought to have been a _post-mortem_," Polly heard Mrs. Punt
remarking to one of Mrs. Johnson's friends, and Miriam and another
were lost in admiration of Mrs. Johnson's decorations. "So very nice
and refined," they were both repeating at intervals.

The sherry and biscuits were still being discussed when Mr. Podger,
the undertaker, arrived, a broad, cheerfully sorrowful, clean-shaven
little man, accompanied by a melancholy-faced assistant. He conversed
for a time with Johnson in the passage outside; the sense of his
business stilled the rising waves of chatter and carried off
everyone's attention in the wake of his heavy footsteps to the room
above.