The damaged ticket

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

Long before the doors opened, the committee had arranged the parcels in exact rows. Each contained bread, candles and a measure of coal, and Mrs Fenner walked between them correcting any string that crossed untidily. Above the platform hung the words FOR IMMEDIATE RELIEF. She looked up at them with satisfaction.

"Without order," she told the young clerk beside her, "kindness reaches only those who shout loudest."

The first applicants presented their numbered tickets and departed with parcels. Mrs Fenner checked every number twice. When Ellen Rowe reached the table, however, she unfolded a square of paper on which the rain had spread the ink into a pale blue cloud. Her name could still be read, but the number had disappeared.

The clerk turned to the committee's ledger. There was Ellen's name, her address and the record of the ticket issued to her. He placed one finger beneath the entry and offered to write a replacement.

Mrs Fenner closed the book. "If the ticket cannot be read, it cannot be accepted."

Ellen explained that she had walked across the fields in the rain because the committee's notice promised that distribution would end at noon. She did not ask for an extra parcel; she pointed to the one already set aside against her name. Mrs Fenner replied that making an exception would be unfair to everyone who had kept a ticket dry.

Those still waiting began to protect their own tickets inside sleeves and pockets. Nobody looked directly at Ellen. The clerk suggested crossing her name out as soon as the parcel was given, so that it could not be claimed twice. Mrs Fenner said that such arrangements encouraged favouritism. Ellen folded the useless paper into a smaller and smaller square.

She was told to return on Monday, when the committee could consider her case. As she turned away, one of Mrs Fenner's gloves slipped from the table. Ellen picked it up and handed it back. Mrs Fenner thanked her at once, without asking for proof that the glove was hers.

Behind them, the parcels remained in their straight rows. The clerk glanced from Ellen's unclaimed parcel to the promise above the platform, but the clock had begun to strike twelve.

“Mrs Fenner’s loyalty to procedure is shown to defeat the very purpose the relief committee exists to serve.”

Evaluate how successfully the writer presents this idea. Support your judgement with detailed references to the passage.