st Martin. I've done valiant for
Ansdore, better'n ever I hoped--poor father ud be proud of me. But my
heart's broken. I don't like remembering--it hurts--I must forget.

Colour had come into the dawn. The Marsh was slowly turning from a
strange papery grey to green. The sky changed from white to blue, and
suddenly became smeared with ruddy clouds. At once the watercourses lit
up, streaking across the green in fiery slats--the shaking boughs of the
willows became full of fire, and at the turn of the road the windows of
Ansdore shone as if it were burning.

There it stood at the road's bend. Its roofs a fiery yellow with the
swarming sea-lichen, its solid walls flushed faintly pink in the
sunrise, its windows squares of amber and flame. It was as a house lit
up and welcoming. It seemed to shout to Joanna as she came to it clop,
clop along the road.

"Come back--come home to me--I'm glad to see you again. You forgot me
for five days, but you won't forget me any more--for I'm all that you've
got now."

_PART III_

THE LITTLE SISTER

Sec.1

For many months Ansdore was a piece of wreckage to which a drowning
woman clung. Joanna's ship had foundered--the high-castled, seaworthy
ship of her life--and she drifted through the dark seas, clinging only
to this which had once been so splendid in the midst of her decks, but
was now mere wreckage, the least thing saved. If she let go she would
drown. So she trailed after Ansdore, and at last it brought her a kind
of anchorage, not in her native land, but at least in no unkind country
of adoption. During the last weeks of Martin's wooing, she had withdrawn
herself a little from the business of the farm into a kind of
overlordship, from which she was far more free to detach herself than
from personal service. Now she went back to work with her hands--she did
not want free hours, either for his company or for her own dreams; she
rose early, because she waked early and must rise when she waked, and
she went round waking the girls, hustling the men, putting her own hand
to the milking or the cooking, more sharp-tongued than ever, less
tolerant, but more terribly alive, with a kind of burning, consuming
life that vexed all those about her.

"She spicks short wud me," said old Stuppeny, "and I've toeald her as she
mun look around fur a new head man. This time I'm going."

"She's a scold," said Broadhurst, "and reckon the young chap saeaved
himself a tedious life