was furious that Mr. Pratt should think
it possible that she could fancy him as a man--"a little rabbity chap
like him, turned fifty, and scarce a hair on him. If he wants another
wife at his age he should get an old maid like Miss Godfrey or a hopeful
widder like Mrs. Woods--not a woman who's had real men to love her, and
ud never look at anything but a real, stout feller."

However, she confided the proposal to Ellen, for she wanted her sister
to know that she had had an offer from a clergyman, and also that she
was still considered desirable--for once or twice Ellen had thrown out
troubling hints that she thought her sister middle-aged. Of course she
was turned thirty now, and hard weather and other hard things had made
her inclined to look older, by reddening and lining her face. But she
had splendid eyes, hair and teeth, and neither the grace nor the energy
of youth had left her body, which had coarsened into something rather
magnificent, tall and strong, plump without stoutness, clean-limbed
without angularity.

She could certainly now have had her pick among the unmarried
farmers--which could not have been said when she first set up her
mastership at Ansdore. Since those times men had learned to tolerate her
swaggering ways, also her love affair with Martin had made her more
normal, more of a soft, accessible woman. Arthur Alce was no longer the
only suitor at Ansdore--it was well known that Sam Turner, who had
lately moved from inland to Northlade, was wanting to have her, and Hugh
Vennal would have been glad to bring her as his second wife to Beggar's
Bush. Joanna was proud of these attachments and saw to it that they
were not obscure--also, one or two of the men, particularly Vennal, she
liked for themselves, for their vitality and "set-upness"; but she shied
away from the prospect of marriage. Martin had shown her all that it
meant in the way of renunciation, and she felt that she could make its
sacrifices for no one less than Martin. Also, the frustration of her
hopes and the inadequacy of her memories had produced in her a queer
antipathy to marriage--a starting aside. Her single state began to have
for her a certain worth in itself, a respectable rigour like a pair of
stays. For a year or so after Martin's death, she had maintained her
solace of secret kisses, but in time she had come to withdraw even from
these, and by now the full force of her vitality was pouring itself into
her life at Ansdore, its a