gone back to school for her second
year, when Joanna was making plum jam in the kitchen, and getting very
hot and sharp-tongued in the process, Mrs. Tolhurst saw a man go past
the window on his way to the front door.

"Lor, miss! There's Parson!" she cried, and the next minute came sounds
of struggle with Joanna's rusty door-bell.

"Go and see what he wants--take off that sacking apron first--and if he
wants to see me, put him into the parlour."

Mr. Pratt lacked "visiting" among many other accomplishments as a parish
priest--the vast, strewn nature of his parish partly excused him--and a
call from him was not the casual event it would have been in many
places, but startling and portentous, requiring fit celebration.

Joanna received him in state, supported by her father's Bible and
stuffed owls. She had kept him waiting while she changed her gown, for
like many people who are sometimes very splendid she could also on
occasion be extremely disreputable, and her jam-making costume was quite
unfit for the masculine eye, even though negligible. Mr. Pratt had grown
rather nervous waiting for her--he had always been afraid of her,
because of her big, breathless ways, and because he felt sure that she
was one of the many who criticized him.

"I--I've only come about a little thing--at least it's not a little
thing to me, but a very big thing--er--er--"

"What is it?" asked Joanna, a stuffed owl staring disconcertingly over
each shoulder.

"For some time there's been complaints about the music in church. Of
course I'm quite sure Mr. Elphick does wonders, and the ladies of the
choir are excellent--er--gifted ... I'm quite sure. But the
harmonium--it's very old and quite a lot of the notes won't play ... and
the bellows ... Mr. Saunders came from Lydd and had a look at it, but he
says it's past repair--er--satisfactory repair, and it ud really save
money in the long run if we bought a new one."

Joanna was a little shocked. She had listened to the grunts and wheezes
of the harmonium from her childhood, and the idea of a new one disturbed
her--it suggested sacrilege and ritualism and the moving of landmarks.

"I like what we've got very well," she said truculently--"It's done for
us properly this thirty year."

"That's just it," said the Rector, "it's done so well that I think we
ought to let it retire from business, and appoint something younger in
its place ... he! he!" He looked at her nervously to see if she had