t generally robust air which
sometimes accompanies extreme delicacy in men.

"The doctor says he's been overworking," continued his father, "and that
he ought to try a year's outdoor life and sea air. If you ask me, I
should say he's overdone a good many things besides work--" he threw the
boy a defiant, malicious glance, rather like a child who gets a thrust
into an elder--"but Walland Marsh is as good a cure for over-play as for
over-work. Not much to keep him up late hereabouts, is there, Miss
Godden?"

"I reckon it'll be twelve o'clock before any of us see our pillows
to-night," said Joanna.

"Tut! Tut I What terrible ways we're getting into, just when I'm
proposing the place as a rest-cure. How do you feel, Miss Godden, being
the only woman guest?"

"I like it."

"Bet you do--so do we."

Joanna laughed and bridled. She felt proud of her position--she pictured
every farmer's wife on the Marsh lying awake that night so that she
could ask her husband directly he came upstairs how Joanna Godden had
looked, what she had said, and what she had worn.

Sec.5

At dinner she sat on the Chairman's right. On her other side, owing to
some accident of push and shuffle, sat young Martin Trevor. At first she
had not thought his place accidental, in spite of his rather stiff
manner before they sat down, but after a while she realized with a pang
of vexation that he was not particularly pleased to find himself next
her. He replied without interest to her remarks and then entered into
conversation with his right-hand neighbour. Joanna was annoyed--she
could not put down his constraint to shyness, for he did not at all
strike her as a shy young man. Nor was he being ungracious to Mr.
Turner of Beckett's House, though the latter could not talk of turnips
half so entertainingly as Joanna would have done. He obviously did not
want to speak to her. Why? Because of what had happened in Pedlinge all
that time ago? She remembered how he had drawn back ... he had not liked
the way she had spoken to Mr. Pratt. She had not liked it herself by the
time she got to the road's turn. But to think of him nursing his
feelings all this time ... and something she had said to Mr. Pratt ...
considering that she had bought them all a new harmonium ... the lazy,
stingy louts with their half-crowns....

She had lost her serenity, her sense of triumph--she felt vaguely angry
with the whole company, and snapped at Arthur Alce when he spoke to