... under my very
roof--"

"Oh, no, ma'am,'twasn't under your roof--we shouldn't have allowed it.
She used to meet him in the field down by Beggar's Bush ..."

"Hold your tongue."

Mrs. Tolhurst was offended; she thought her mistress's behaviour
unwarranted either by modesty or indignation. There were burning tears
in Joanna's eyes as she flung herself out of the room. She was blind as
she went down the passage, twisting her apron furiously in her hands.

"Martha Tilden!" she called--"Martha Tilden!"

"Oh," she thought in her heart, "I raised his wages so's he could marry
her--for months this has been going on ... the field down by Beggar's
Bush ... Oh, I could kill her!" Then shouting into the yard--"Martha
Tilden! Martha Tilden!"

"I'm coming, Miss Joanna," Martha's soft drawly voice increased her
bitterness; her own, compared with it, sounded harsh, empty,
inexperienced. Martha's voice was full of the secrets of love--the
secrets of Dick Socknersh's love.

"Come into the dairy," she said hoarsely.

Martha came and stood before her. She evidently knew what was ahead, for
she looked pale and a little scared, and yet she had about her a strange
air of confidence ... though not so strange, after all, since she
carried Dick Socknersh's child, and her memory was full of his caresses
and the secrets of his love ... thus bravely could Joanna herself have
faced an angry world....

"You leave my service at once," she said.

Martha began to cry.

"You know what for?"

"Yes, Miss Joanna."

"I wonder you've had the impudence to go about as you've done--eating my
food and taking my wages, while all the time you've been carrying on
with my looker."

"Your looker?--No, Miss Joanna."

"What d'you mean?"

"I don't know what _you_ mean, miss--I've never had naeun to do wud Dick
Socknersh if it's him you're thinking of."

"Not Socknersh, but I ... who _is_ the man, then?"

"Well, it aeun't no secret from anyone but you, Miss Joanna, so I doean't
mind telling you as my boy is Peter Relf, their looker at Old
Honeychild. We've bin walking out ever sinst the day he came after your
plaeace as looker here, and we'd be married now if he hadn't his old
mother and dad to keep, and got into some nasty silly trouble wud them
fellers wot put money on horses they've never seen.... He doean't get
more'n fifteen bob a week at Honeychild, and he can't keep the old folk
on less than eight, them being always filling themselves wi