ttered tables or
re-inspecting and re-valuing the presents which had been laid out, after
the best style, in the dining-room. Sir Harry Trevor had sent Ellen a
little pearl pendant, though he had been unable to accept Joanna's
invitation and come to the wedding himself--he wrote from a London
address and hinted vaguely that he might never come back to North
Farthing House, which had been let furnished. His gift was the chief
centre of interest--when Mrs. Vine had done comparing her electro-plated
cruet most favourably with the one presented by Mrs. Furnese and the
ignoble china object that Mrs. Cobb had had the meanness to send, and
Mrs. Bates had recovered from the shock of finding that her tea-cosy was
the exact same shape and pattern as the one given by Mrs. Gain. People
thought it odd that the Old Squire should send pearls to Ellen
Godden--something for the table would have been much more seemly.

Joanna had grown weary--her shoulders drooped under her golden gown, she
tossed back her head and yawned against the back of her hand. She was
tired of it all, and wanted them to go. What were they staying for? They
must know the price of everything pretty well by this time and have
eaten enough to save their suppers. She was no polished hostess,
concealing her boredom, and the company began soon to melt away. Traps
lurched over the shingle of Ansdore's drive, the Pricketts walked off
across the innings to Great Ansdore, guests from Rye packed into two
hired wagonettes, and the cousins from the Isle of Wight drove back to
the George, where, as there were eight of them and they refused to be
separated, Joanna was munificently entertaining them instead of under
her own roof.

When the last was gone, she turned back into the house, where Mrs.
Tolhurst stood ready with her broom to begin an immediate sweep-up after
the waiters, whom she looked upon as the chief source of the disorder. A
queer feeling came over Joanna, a feeling of loneliness, of craving, and
she fell in all her glory of feathers and silk upon Mrs. Tolhurst's
alpaca bosom. Gone were those arbitrary and often doubtful distinctions
between them, and the mistress enjoyed the luxury of a good cry in her
servant's arms.

Sec.18

Ellen's marriage broke into Joanna's life quite as devastatingly as
Martin's death. Though for more than three years her sister had been
away at school, with an ever-widening gulf of temperament between
herself and the farm, and t