the back seat?"

"Why? Because I don't choose to let him jog over the roads in such a
rough conveyance."

Joyce's lip curled.

"It is good enough for father and for me," she said, "and ought to be
good enough for you."

Melville arranged his hair, and touched the ends of his lace cravat.

"My dear child, don't make a scene before witnesses, I beseech you."

Joyce waited to hear no more, but tripped away, turning, through a
quaint archway, to the Cathedral Green, where the cathedral stood
before her in all its majesty.

The great west front of Wells Cathedral has few rivals, and dull indeed
must be the heart that does not respond in some measure to its grandeur.

Involuntarily Joyce said, "How beautiful!" and then, leaving the road,
she passed through a turnstile and pursued her way under the shadow of a
row of limes, which skirted the wide expanse of turf before the
cathedral.

The blue sky of the summer day over-arched the stately church, and a few
white clouds sailed above the central tower. There were no jarring
sounds of wheels, no tread of many feet, no traffic which could tell of
trade. Although it was high noontide, the stillness was profound: the
jackdaw's cry, the distant voices of children in the market-square, the
rustle of the leaves in the trees, and a faint murmur of tinkling water,
only seemed to make the quiet more quiet, the silence more complete.

The great west door was open, and Joyce walked towards it, and passed
under it into the cool shadows of the nave. She had often done this
before, going out from the north porch into the Close again, but to-day
there seemed, she scarcely knew why, the stirring of a new life within
her.

[Illustration: Wells Cathedral.]

It was the moment, perhaps, of crossing the barrier which divides
childhood from womanhood; the pause which comes in most young lives,
when there is, as it were, a hush before the dawn of the coming day.

Joyce had been silent during the drive from Fair Acres; her father had
invited no conversation, and a glance now and then at his profile as he
sat on the high box seat at her side, had convinced Joyce that the lines
of care on his forehead were not traced there without a reason.

The fop, who condescended to sit in the back seat of the cumbrous
vehicle, indulged in sundry grumbles at the bad road, the dust, the slow
pace of Mavis the mare, the heat, and such like trifles, which were,
however, sufficient to disturb the serenity