the Squire's ate all
his cabbage?--You hand him the dish again--not under his chin--he don't
want to eat out of it--but low down, so as he can get hold of the
spoon...."

Joanna looked upon her luncheon party as a great success, and her
pleasure was increased by the fact that soon after it Sir Harry Trevor
and his sister paid a ceremonial call on Ellen at Donkey Street.

"Now she'll be pleased," thought Joanna, "it's always what she's been
hankering after--having gentlefolk call on her and leave their cards. It
ain't my fault it hasn't happened earlier.... I'm unaccountable glad she
met them at my house. It'll learn her to think prouder of me."

Sec.24

That spring and summer Sir Harry Trevor was a good deal at North
Farthing, and it was rumoured on the Marsh that he had run through the
money so magnanimously left him and had been driven home to economize.
Joanna did not see as much of him as in the old days--he had given up
his attempts at farming, and had let off all the North Farthing land
except the actual garden and paddock. He came to see her once or twice,
and she went about as rarely to see him. It struck her that he had
changed in many ways, and she wondered a little where he had been and
what he had done during the last four years. He did not look any older.
Some queer, rather unpleasant lines had traced themselves at the corners
of his mouth and eyes, but strangely enough, though they added to his
characteristic air of humorous sophistication, they also added to his
youth, for they were lines of desire, of feeling ... perhaps in his four
years of absence from the Marsh he had learned how to feel at last, and
had found youth instead of age in the commotions which feeling brings.
Though he must be fifty-five, he looked scarcely more than forty--and he
had a queer, weak, loose, emotional air about him that she found it hard
to account for.

In the circumstances she did not press invitations upon him, she had no
time to waste on men who did not appreciate her as a woman--which the
Squire, in spite of his susceptibility, obviously failed to do. From
June to August she met him only once, and that was at Ellen's. Neither
did she see very much of Ellen that summer--her life was too full of
hard work, as a substitute for economy.

Curiously enough next time she went to see her sister Sir Harry was
there again.

"Hullo! I always seem to be meeting you here," she said--"and nowhere
else--you never come t