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There was to be a grand entertainment in the assembly room of the

'Crown and Sceptre' in aid of the County Hospital Mrs Martin,

of one of the late partners in the bank, lived in a large house near

Fenmarket, and still had an interest in the business She was

distinctly above anybody who lived in the town, and she kne to

show her superiority by venturing sohbours could not possibly do She had been known to carry

through the street a quart bottle of horse physic although it was

wrapped up in nothing but brown paper On her way she rieved than she hen Mrs Martin's

carriage swept past her in the dusty, narrow lane which led to the

Hall Mrs Martin could also afford to recognise in a entleman came from London to lecture in the town, and showed astonished Fen views of the Holy Land The exhibition

had been provided in order to extinguish a debt incurred in repairing

the church, but the rector's wife, and the brewer's wife, after

consultation, decided that they must leave the lecturer to return to

his inn Mrs Martin, however, invited hiood well, and knew that he was no ordinary hters, and that they were

no ordinary women She had been heard to say that they were ladies,

and that Mr Hopgood was a gentleman; and she kept up a distant kind

of intimacy with them, always nodded to therapes and flowers She had