"On Friday," she answered. "That is the day I have to send off some of my writing," he said; "my market-day, also, you see." "Are you a poet?" she asked timidly. "No," he answered, smiling at her; "I am that poor creature, an historian: one of those restless persons who furridge among the annals of the past." "Oh," she said enthusiastically, "I have always cared more about history than anything else!" "Well, then, if you come to-morrow to the Green Dragon at eleven o’clock," he said kindly, "you will have the privilege of writing history instead of reading it. And now I suppose I must hasten back to the tyranny of Queen Elizabeth. Can you lift that jar into the perambulator? You see I can’t." She hoisted it into the perambulator, and then stood at the gate, watching him as he pushed it patiently over the rough road. *CHAPTER IV.* *THE MAKING OF THE PASTRY.* That same afternoon Mrs. Hammond put on her best things and drove in the dogcart to Minton, where Auntie Lloyd of the Tan-House Farm was giving a tea-party. Joan had refused to go. She had a profound contempt for these social gatherings, and Auntie Lloyd and she had no great love, the one for the other. Auntie Lloyd, who was regarded as the oracle of the family, summed Joan up in a few sentences: "She’s a wayward creature, with all her fads about books and book learning. I’ve no patience with her. Fowls and butter and such things have been good enough for us; why does she want to meddle with things which don’t concern her? She’s clever at her work, and diligent too. If it weren’t for that, there’d be no abiding her." Joan summed Auntie Lloyd up in a few words: "Oh, she’s Auntie Lloyd," she said, shrugging her shoulders. So when her mother urged her to go to Minton to this tea-party, which was to be something special, Joan said: "No, I don’t care about going. Auntie Lloyd worries me to death. And what with her, and the rum in the tea, and those horrid crumpets, I’d far rather stay at home, and make pastry and read a book." So she stayed. There was plenty of pastry in the larder, and there seemed no particular reason why she should add to the store. But she evidently thought differently about the matter, for she went into the kitchen and rolled up her sleeves and began her work. "I hope this will be the best pastry I have ever made," she said to herself, as she prepared several jam-puffs and an open tart. "I should like him to taste my pastry. An historian. I wonder what we shall write about to-morrow."