cision, the glasses and plates and dishes.

"We will adjourn to the sitting-room after dinner," Miss Falconer said.
"I am glad to be spared coming down twice in the day. It was fortunate
that I was seated in this room yesterday when Mrs. More called; she
could not have mounted the stairs. Oh! here is Charlotte. Now we will
sit down to the table; say grace, dear Charlotte."

Charlotte obeyed, and then the cover was lifted from a fowl, done to a
turn; and Patty handed round the vegetables, and poured out cider for
Miss Falconer, while Charlotte had a glass of port-wine, as she had been
rather "below par" for a day or two; and Joyce drank water from
preference.

Before the meal was concluded, Miss Falconer had decided that she would
write to Mrs. More, and propose that her niece from Fair Acres should
accept her invitation to Barley Wood, at such time as might be most
convenient to her to arrange it. She did not tell Joyce of this
decision, but she considered by making it she was conferring a real
favour on the "little rustic," whose beauty she was inwardly comparing
to that of a wild rose; scarcely the drooping rose of Charlotte's poem!

The two girls set out, soon after dinner, for the market-place, where
the shops were situated. The market-place at Wells is not without its
picturesque features; old gabled houses skirt the north side and part of
the south side, while a cross stands at the bottom of the square. Clear
water, from one of the many springs, which first attracted the College
of Priests, in the time of Alfred's son Edward, to found their religious
house in Wells, makes soft music as it runs down the streets in crystal
streams. Two quaint archways, or, as they were in old documents called,
the Palace Eye and the Deanery Eye, stand at the head of the
market-square, and between them are two ancient houses, one of which was
built by Bishop Beckington, and has rooms over the porch, or gateway,
through which foot-passengers pass into the Cathedral Green.

There is a delightful sense that life flows easily and peacefully at
Wells by the appearance of its citizens. The master of the large shop
where the two girls stopped, was standing complacently at the door, his
hands in his pockets, calmly surveying the rush of the cathedral
choristers across the square, for the first chime had sounded for
afternoon service.

Joyce was known as Squire Falconer's daughter at Fair Acres, and treated
with respect. She was conduct