us efforts to price Miss Godden's gown. Now and then a dull
roar of laughter came to her from the Club room. What were they talking
about, Joanna wondered. Had there been much debate over her remarks on
breaking pasture?...

Sec.6

On the whole, the Farmers' Club Dinner left behind it a rankling
trail--for one thing, it was not followed as she had hoped and half
expected by an invitation to join the Farmers' Club. No, they would
never have a woman privileged among them--she realized that, in spite of
her success, certain doors would always be shut on her. The men would
far rather open those doors ceremonially now and then than allow her to
go freely in and out. After all, perhaps they were right--hadn't she got
her own rooms that they were shut out of?... Women were always
different from men, even if they did the same things ... she had heard
people talk of "woman's sphere." What did that mean? A husband and
children, of course--any fool could tell you that. When you had a
husband and children you didn't go round knocking at the men's doors,
but shut yourself up snugly inside your own ... you were warm and cosy,
and the firelight played on the ceiling.... But if you were alone inside
your room--with no husband or child to keep you company ... then it was
terrible, worse than being outside ... and no wonder you went round to
the men's doors, and knocked on them and begged them to give you a
little company, or something to do to help you to forget your empty
room....

"Well, I could marry Arthur Alce any day I liked," she thought to
herself.

But somehow that did not seem any solution to the problem.

She thought of one or two other men who had approached her, but had been
scared off before they had reached any definite position of courtship.
They were no good either--young Cobb of Slinches had married six months
ago, and Jack Abbot of Stock Bridge belonged to the Christian Believers,
who kept Sunday on Saturday, and in other ways fathered confusion.
Besides, she didn't want to marry just anyone who would have her--some
dull yeoman who would take her away from Ansdore, or else come with all
his stupid, antiquated, man-made notions to sit for ever on her
enterprising acres. She wanted her marriage to be some big,
neighbour-startling adventure--she wanted either to marry someone above
herself in birth and station, or else very much below. She had touched
the fringe of the latter experience and found it disappoin