the cream, and much of the milk, of Bursley’s retail trade.  There were unprincipled tradesmen in Hanbridge ready to pay the car-fares of any customer who spent a crown in their establishments.  Hanbridge was the geographical centre of the Five Towns, and it was alive to its situation.  Useless for Bursley to compete!  If Mrs. Critchlow had been a philosopher, if she had known that geography had always made history, she would have given up her enterprise a dozen years ago.  But Mrs. Critchlow was merely Maria Insull.  She had seen Baines’s in its magnificent prime, when Baines’s almost conferred a favour on customers in serving them.  At the time when she took over the business under the wing of her husband, it was still a good business.  But from that instant the tide had seemed to turn.  She had fought, and she kept on fighting, stupidly.  She was not aware that she was fighting against evolution, not aware that evolution had chosen her for one of its victims!  She could understand that all the other shops in the Square should fail, but not that Baines’s should fail!  She was as industrious as ever, as good a buyer, as good a seller, as keen for novelties, as economical, as methodical!  And yet the returns dropped and dropped.

She naturally had no sympathy from Charles, who now took small interest even in his own business, or what was left of it, and who was coldly disgusted at the ultimate cost of his marriage.  Charles gave her no money that he could avoid giving her.  The crisis had been slowly approaching for years.  The assistants in the shop had said nothing, or had only whispered among themselves, but now that the crisis had flowered suddenly in an attempted self-murder, they all spoke at once, and the evidences were pieced together into a formidable proof of the strain which Mrs. Critchlow had suffered.  It appeared that for many months she had been depressed and irritable, that sometimes she would sit down in the midst of work and declare, with every sign of exhaustion, that she could do no more.  Then with equal briskness she would arise and force herself to labour.  She did not sleep for whole nights.  One assistant related how she had complained of having had no sleep whatever for four nights consecutively.  She had noises in the ears and a chronic headache.  Never very plump, she had grown thinner and thinner.  And she was for ever taking pills:  this information came from Charles’s manager.  She had had several outrageous quarrels with the redoubtable Charles, to the stupefaction of all who heard or saw them. ...  Mrs. Critchlow standing up to her husband!  Another strange thing was that she thought the bills of several of the big Manchester firms were unpaid, when as a fact they had been paid.  Even when shown the receipts she would not be convinced, though she pretended to be convinced.  She would recommence the next day.  All this was sufficiently disconcerting for female assistants in the drapery.  But what could they do?