t "I want to learn to do a bit o' woman's
work. I'm tired o' bein' neyther th' one thing nor th' other. Seems
loike I've allus been doin' men's ways, an' I am na content."

Two or three times Derrick saw her passing to and fro before the window,
hushing the child in her arms, and once he even heard her singing to
it in a low, and evidently rarely used voice. Up to the time that Joan
first sang to the child, she had never sung in her life. She caught
herself one day half chanting a lullaby she had heard Anice sing. The
sound of her own voice was so novel to her, that she paused all at once
in her walk across the room, prompted by a queer impulse to listen.

"It moight ha' been somebody else," she said. "I wonder what made me do
it. It wur a queer thing."

Sometimes Derrick met Joan entering the Rectory (at which both were
frequent visitors); sometimes, passing through the hall on her way home;
but however often he met her, he never felt that he advanced at all in
her friendship.

On one occasion, having bidden Anice goodnight and gone out on the
staircase, Joan stepped hurriedly back into the room and stood at the
door as if waiting.

"What is it?" Anice asked.

Joan started. She had looked flushed and downcast, and when Anice
addressed her, an expression of conscious self-betrayal fell upon her.

"It is Mester Derrick," she answered, and in a moment she went out.

Anice remained seated at the table, her hands clasped before her.

"Perhaps," at last she said aloud, "perhaps this is what is to be done
with her. And then--" her lips tremulous,--"it will be a work for me to
do."

Derrick's friendship and affection for herself held no germ of warmer
feeling. If she had had the slightest doubt of this, she would have
relinquished nothing. She had no exaggerated notions of self-immolation.
She would not have given up to another woman what Heaven had given to
herself, any more than she would have striven to win from another woman
what had been Heaven's gift to her. If she felt pain, it was not the
pain of a small envy, but of a great tenderness. She was capable of
making any effort for the ultimate good of the man she could have loved
with the whole strength of her nature.

When she entered her room that night, Joan Lowrie was moved to some
surprise by a scene which met her eyes. It was a simple thing, and under
some circumstances would have meant little; but taken in connection with
her remembrance of past events,