't really want to
go."

"Reckon he does," said Joanna. "He wants to go anywhere that pleases
me."

This did not help to reconcile Ellen.

"Well, I don't want to be taken anywhere just to please you."

"It pleases you too, don't it?"

"No, it doesn't. I don't care twopence about fairs and shows, and Arthur
Alce bores me."

This double blasphemy temporarily deprived Joanna of speech.

"If he's only taking me to please you," continued Ellen, "he can just
leave me at home to please myself."

"What nonsense!" cried her sister--"here have I been racking around for
hours just to fix a way of getting you to the show, and now you say you
don't care about it."

"Well, I don't."

"Then you should ought to. I never saw such airs as you give yourself.
Not care about Sanger's World Wide Show!--I tell you, you just about
shall go to it, ma'am, whether you care about it or not, and Arthur Alce
shall take you."

Thus the treat was arranged, and on Wednesday afternoon Alce drove to
the door in his high, two-wheeled dog-cart, and Ellen climbed up beside
him, under the supervision of Mrs. Tolhurst, whom Joanna, before setting
out for market, had commissioned to "see as she went." Not that Joanna
could really bring herself to believe that Ellen was truthful in saying
she did not care about the show, but she thought it possible that sheer
contrariness might keep her away.

Ellen was wearing her darkest, demurest clothes, in emphatic contrast to
the ribbons and laces in which Brodnyx and Pedlinge usually went to the
fair. Her hair was neatly coiled under her little, trim black hat, and
she wore dark suede gloves and buckled shoes. Alce felt afraid of her,
especially as during the drive she never opened her mouth except in
brief response to some remark of his.

Ellen despised Arthur Alce--she did not like his looks, his
old-fashioned side-whiskers and Gladstone collars, or the amount of hair
and freckles that covered the exposed portions of his skin. She despised
him, too, for his devotion to Joanna; she did not understand how a man
could be inspired with a lifelong love for Joanna, who seemed to her
unattractive--coarse and bouncing. She also a little resented this
devotion, the way it was accepted as an established fact in the
neighbourhood, a standing sum to Joanna's credit. Of course she was fond
of her sister--she could not help it--but she would have forgiven her
more easily for her ruthless domineering, if she had not