by her mother's voice:

"Joyce, what are you about? come down at once. The men want some more
cakes, and you may as well trudge down to the field, as I----"

Joyce ran down immediately, first hiding her Bible in the small drawer
of the high chest in her room.

"I wish you had come sooner, mother, and seen Mrs. More."

"Do you? I waited till I heard the wheels in the road before I came; but
now I am here, I mean to stay. I want to make some custards for supper,
and whip the cream for a syllabub. Mr. Arundel shan't grumble at his
fare."

"Mrs. More is a beautiful old lady," Joyce said.

"She did not give you any tracts, I hope," Mrs. Falconer said. "I won't
have any cant, and rank Methodism here. You know my mind, Joyce."

"Yes, mother," Joyce said, gently. "But I should like to pay a visit to
Barley Wood. Do you think, when the boys return to school, I _may_ go."

"Well, we will see about it. If you want to gad about you must go, I
suppose. You all seem alike now; no rest and no peace unless you are
scouring the country like so many wild things. It was very different in
my young days. I don't know that I ever slept a night from under my
father's roof till I married. I don't mind your going to Barley Wood at
the proper time, but I'll have no tracts and no nonsense here, or
setting up servant-girls to be wiser than their betters; for all this
talk, and preaching, and reading, and writing, the Mendip folk are as
bad, as bad can be. Mrs. More has not done much there, anyhow. That was
plain enough the other day, when the man was brought before the
justices, and they were a pack of chicken-hearts, and dare not commit
him for fear of getting their heads broken as they rode home; your
father was the only brave man amongst them, and held out that the rascal
should be committed for trial."

All this was said in Mrs. Falconer's voluble fashion, while she was
engaged in piling up a basket full of harvest cakes, which Joyce soon
bore off to the field, where her brothers, and Nip and Pip were still
tossing about the sweet hay, and burying themselves and everyone else
under it. Piers threw a wisp with the end of his crutch at Joyce as she
came, and Bunny rushed to possess himself of the basket and scatter the
cakes about, which the younger part of the haymakers scrambled for,
head foremost, burrowing in the tussocks of hay, like so many young
ferrets, while Nip and Pip barked and danced about in the extremity of
their excitem