Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

One Sunday, Jeanette and her mother return home with Mrs. White to lots of noise coming from Next Door. They realize that the neighbors are having sex, and her mother sends Jeanette out of the house for ice cream from the passing truck. When she returns, they play the piano and sing hymns loudly, much to their neighbors’ dismay, who soon come out to protest the noise. Soon after she converted, Jeanette’s mother was recommended by Pastor Spratt to be the new treasurer for the Society for the Lost in Wigan. She takes the job and is very successful, bringing in a lot of money through different initiatives and mail-order religious products.

The society has a yearly retreat to an affiliated boarding house in Morecambe, and it is there that Jeanette meets a friend of her mother’s. The woman is a wreath-maker who later begins collaborating with an undertaker and offers Jeanette a Saturday job. One year, the Society for the Lost has a special conference in Jeanette’s town, and she passes out tracts in the rain at market. Mrs. Arkwright lets her do so under her tent and Jeanette succeeds in passing out every single one.