heard a thud of footsteps and
creaking of boards, which announced that Mene Tekel and Nan Gregory of
Windpumps were stirring in their bedroom. In an incredibly short time
they were coming downstairs, tying apron-strings and screwing up hair as
they went, and making a terrific stump past the door behind which they
imagined their mistress was in bed. It was a great shock to them to find
that she was downstairs before them--they weren't more than five minutes
late.

"Hurry up, gals," said Joanna, "and get that kettle boiling for the men.
I hear Broadhurst about the yard. Mene Tekel, see as there's no clinkers
left in the grate; Mrs. Alce never got her bath yesterday evening before
dinner as she expects it. When did you do the flues last?"

She set her household about its business--her dreams could not live in
the atmosphere of antagonistic suspicion in which she had always viewed
the younger members of her own sex. She was firmly convinced that
neither Nan nor Mene would do a stroke of work if she was not "at them";
the same opinion applied in a lesser degree to the men in the yard. So
till Ansdore's early breakfast appeared amid much hustling and scolding,
Joanna had no time to think about her lover, or continue the dreams so
strangely and gloriously begun in the sunless dawn.

Bertie was late for breakfast, and came down apologising for having
overslept himself. But he had a warm, sleepy, rumpled look about him
which made her forgive him. He was like a little boy--her little boy ...
she dropped her eyelids over her tears.

After breakfast, as soon as they were alone, she stole into his arms and
held close to him, without embrace, her hands just clasped over her
breast on which her chin had fallen. He tried to raise her burning,
blushing face, but she turned it to his shoulder.

Sec.24

Albert Hill went back to London on Tuesday, but he came down again the
following week-end, and the next, and the next, and then his engagement
to Joanna was made public.

In this respect the trick was hers. The affair had ended in a committal
which he had not expected, but his own victory was too substantial for
him to regret any development of it to her advantage. Besides, he had
seen the impossibility of conducting the affair on any other lines, both
on account of the circumstances in which she lived and of her passionate
distress when she realized that he did not consider marriage an
inevitable consequence of their relati