She sat on the edge of the bed, stooping over her sister, and her big
rough plaits dangled in the child's face.

"Hullo, Jo--hullo, old Jo," continued the drowsy murmur.

"Go to sleep, you bad girl," said Joanna, forgetting that she herself
had roused her.

Ellen was not wide enough awake to have any conflicting views on the
subject, and she nestled down again with a deep sigh. For the next ten
minutes the room was full of small sounds--the splashing of cold water
in the basin, the shuffle of coarse linen, the click of fastening stays,
the rhythmic swish of a hair brush. Then came two silent minutes, while
Joanna knelt with closed eyes and folded hands beside her big, tumbled
bed, and said the prayers that her mother had taught her eighteen years
ago--word for word as she had said them when she was five, even to the
"make me a good girl" at the end. Then she jumped up briskly and tore
the sheet off the bed, throwing it with the pillows on the floor, so
that Grace Wickens the servant should have no chance of making the bed
without stripping it, as was the way of her kind.

Grace was not up yet, of course. Joanna hit her door a resounding thump
as she passed it on her way to the kitchen. Here the dead ashes had been
raked out overnight, and the fire laid according to custom. She lit the
fire and put the kettle on to boil; she did not consider it beneath her
to perform these menial offices. She knew that every hand was needed for
the early morning work of a farm. By the time she had finished both
Grace and Martha were in the room, yawning and rubbing their eyes.

"That'll burn up nicely now," said Joanna, surveying the fire. "You'd
better put the fish-kettle on too, in case Broadhurst wants hot water
for a mash. Bring me out a cup of tea as soon as you can get it
ready--I'll be somewhere in the yard."

She put on an old coat of her father's over her black dress, and went
out, her nailed boots clattering on the cobble-stones. The men were
up--they should have been up an hour now--but no sounds of activity came
from the barns. The yard was in stillness, a little mist floating
against the walls, and the pervading greyness of the morning seemed to
be lit up by the huge blotches of yellow lichen that covered the slated
roofs of barns and dwelling--the roofs were all new, having only for a
year or two superseded the old roofs of osier thatch, but that queer
golden rust had almost hidden their substance, covering them as i