es came as a
dim flush, and the younger generation of the Three Marshes was inclined
to revolt from the standards of its fathers.

So young Stacey Vine kissed her daringly under the mistletoe at the
passage bend, and was rewarded with a gasp of sweet scent, which made
him talk a lot at the Woolpack. While Tom Southland, a man of few words,
went home and closed with his father's offer of a partnership in his
farm, which hitherto he had thought of setting aside in favour of an
escape to Australia. Ellen was pleased at the time, but a night's
thought made her scornful.

"Don't you know any really nice people?" she asked Joanna. "Why did you
send me to school with gentlemen's daughters if you just meant me to mix
with common people when I came out?"

"You can mix with any gentlefolk you can find to mix with. I myself have
been engaged to marry a gentleman's son, and his father would have come
to my party if he hadn't been away for Christmas."

She felt angry and sore with Ellen, but she was bound to admit that her
grievance had a certain justification. After all, she had always meant
her to be a lady, and now, she supposed, she was merely behaving like
one. She cast about her for means of introducing her sister into the
spheres she coveted ... if only Sir Harry Trevor would come home!--But
she gathered there was little prospect of that for some time. Then she
thought of Mr. Pratt, the rector.... It was the first time that she had
ever considered him as a social asset--his poverty, his inefficiency and
self-depreciation had quite outweighed his gentility in her ideas; he
had existed only as the Voice of the Church on Walland Marsh, and the
spasmodic respect she paid him was for his office alone. But now she
began to remember that he was an educated man and a gentleman, who might
supply the want in her sister's life without in any way encouraging
those more undesirable "notions" she had picked up at school.

Accordingly, Mr. Pratt, hitherto neglected, was invited to Ansdore with
a frequency and enthusiasm that completely turned his head. He spoiled
the whole scheme by misinterpreting its motive, and after about the
ninth tea-party, became buoyed with insane and presumptuous hopes, and
proposed to Joanna. She was overwhelmed, and did not scruple to
overwhelm him, with anger and consternation. It was not that she did not
consider the rectory a fit match for Ansdore, even with only two hundred
a year attached to it, but she