Diana's eyes opened slightly. "It would be a very strange person that could not get on with Mr. Masters," she answered. "Easy, is he? I hate easy men! The best of 'em are helpless enough; but when you get one of the easy soft, they are consented if every door hangs on one hinge." Diana made no answer. "How does your girl get along?" "Very well. Pretty well." "What you want with a girl, I don't see." "I didn't either. But Mr. Masters wants me to do other things." "Set you up to be a lady! Well, the world's full o' fools." "I am as busy, mother, as ever I was in my life." "Depends on what you call business. Making yourself unfit for business, I should say. Call it what you like. I suppose he is your humble servant, and just gives you your own way." "He is not that sort of man at all, mother. He is as kind as he can be; but he is nobody's humble servant." "Then I suppose you are his. There is somebody now, Diana; it's Kate Boddington. Do go in and take care of her,--you can do so much,--and keep her from coming out here where I am." "Well, Di!" exclaimed her relative as Diana met her. "Ain't it a sight to see _you_ at the sewin' meetin'! Why haven't you been before? Seems to me, you make an uncommon long honeymoon of it." Diana's natural sweetness and dignity, and furthermore, the great ballast of old pain and new gladness which lay deep down in her heart, kept her quite steady and unruffled under all such breezes. She had many of the like to meet that day; and the sweet calm and poise of her manner through them all would have done honour to the most practised woman of the world. Most of her friends and neighbours here collected had scarce seen her since her marriage, unless in church; and they were curious to know how she would carry herself, and curious in general about many things. It was a sort of battery that Diana had to face, and sometimes a masked battery; but it was impossible to tell whether a shot hit. "What I want to know," said Mrs. Boddington, "is, where the minister and you made it up, Di. You were awful sly about it!" "Ain't that so?" chimed in Mrs. Carpenter. "I never had no notion o' what was goin' on--not the smallest idee; and I was jest a sayin' one day to Miss Gunn, or somebody--I declare I don't know now who 'twas, I was so dumbfounded when the news come, it took all my memory away;--but I was jes' a sayin' to somebody, and I remember it because I'd jes' been after dandelion greens and couldn't find none; they was jest about past by then, and bitter; and we was a settin' with our empty baskets; and I was jes' tellin' somebody, I don't know who 'twas, who I thought would make a good wife for the minister; when up comes Mrs. Starling's Josiah and reaches me the invitation. 'There!' says I; 'if he ain't a goin' to have Diana Starling!' I was beat." "I daresay you could have fitted him just as well," remarked Mrs. Starling.