The Old Wives' Tale

This chapter opens two years after the events of Chapter 3. Constance has been put to work in the shop and is growing comfortable with the work, while Sophia has been studying for a teaching career. The town of Bursley is hosting a traveling carnival, and all the residents are abuzz about an elephant that went on a rampage and had to be shot dead. Constance and Mrs. Baines go see the dead elephant, while Sophia remains behind. As the only family member at home, she takes her turn to sit in her father’s bedroom. Shortly after the others leave, Sophia sees someone approaching in the street and goes downstairs to the family shop. The visitor is Gerald Scales, a traveling salesman who keeps the draper’s shop stocked with cloth and whom Sophia briefly caught sight of on a previous visit. That visit had stayed in her mind, and in a flush of infatuation, she rushes down to the shop to meet him again.

When Sophia returns upstairs, she finds that in her absence, her father has slipped partway off the bed, asphyxiated, and died. The passing of Mr. Baines is the end of an era for their family, but it also brings a reprieve: “[T]he secret relief resulting from the death would not be entirely hidden” (117).