ur husband goes."

"What on earth's happened?" thought Ellen to herself--"She's positively
meek."

The next minute she knew.

"Ellen," said Joanna, as they swung into the Straight Mile, "I've got a
friend coming to spend the day on Monday--a Mr. Hill that I met in
Marlingate."

Sec.17

For the next few days Joanna was restless and nervous; she could not be
busy with Ansdore, even after a fortnight's absence. The truth in her
heart was that she found Ansdore rather flat. Wilson's pride in the
growth of the young lambs, Broadhurst's anxiety about Spot's calving and
his preoccupation with the Suffolk dray-horse Joanna was to buy at
Ashford fair that year, all seemed irrelevant to the main purpose of
life. The main stream of her life had suddenly been turned
underground--it ran under Ansdore's wide innings--on Monday it would
come again to the surface, and take her away from Ansdore.

The outward events of Monday were not exciting. Joanna drove into Rye
with Peter Crouch behind her, and met Albert Hill with a decorous
handshake on the platform. During the drive home, and indeed during most
of his visit, his attitude towards her was scarcely more than ordinary
friendship. In the afternoon, when Ellen had gone out with Tip Ernley,
he gave her a few kisses, but without much passion. She began to feel
disquieted. Had he changed? Was there someone else he liked? At all
costs she must hold him--she must not let him go.

The truth was that Hill felt uncertain how he stood--he was bewildered
in his mind. What was she driving at? Surely she did not think of
marriage--the difference in their ages was far too great. But what else
could she be thinking of? He gathered that she was invincibly
respectable--and yet he was not sure.... In spite of her decorum, she
had queer, unguarded ways. He had met no one exactly like her, though he
was a man of wide and not very edifying experience. The tactics which
had started his friendship with Joanna he had learned at the shorthand
and typewriting college where he had learned his clerking job--and they
had brought him a rummage of adventures, some transient, some sticky,
some dirty, some glamorous. He had met girls of a fairly good
class--for his looks caused much to be forgiven him--as well as the
typists, shop-girls and waitresses of his more usual association. But he
had never met anyone quite like Joanna--so simple yet so swaggering, so
solid yet so ardent, so rigid yet so ungua