“So you did, mother,” said Joan, rising up and putting back her chair carefully. “If he is that kind of man we may as well put our best foot foremost:” and with that she smoothed the table cover carefully and lifted Mrs. Joscelyn’s basket of work, which was the chief thing that made it home-like, out of the way. Joan even put away her knitting, and sat with her hands before her, which was sad punishment to herself, in order to look as Miss Joscelyn ought before the stranger. As for Mrs. Joscelyn, she saw this done with a kind of anguish; but she was not strong enough to resist. Then Mr. Selby was ushered in by the alarmed Mary Ann, who, instead of announcing him as she ought, said in a frightened tone, “Here’s the maan,” and vanished precipitately with such an attack of the nerves that she had to go and lie down upon her bed. Very soon, however, he put them both at their ease. He found Joan’s knitting laid away on the top of the work basket, to which Mrs. Joscelyn directed his attention by frequent wistful glances at it, and said he was sure it was this she was looking for, though Joan’s anxious desire had been to look at nothing. And then he sat and talked. Joan could scarcely contain her wonder, and amusement, and admiration at this talk. After a few minutes her fingers unconsciously sought the familiar needles which restored the balance of her mind, and made her free to listen. She was not young, nor had she any air of being young. Her figure was trim and round, but well developed, ample and matronly, though not with any superabundance of flesh. She had a pair of excellent serviceable brown eyes, with a great deal of light in them; not sparkling unduly, or employing themselves in any unauthorised way, but seeing everything, and making a remark now and then of their own, which an intelligent spectator could not but be interested by. The way in which she turned those eyes from her mother to the visitor and back again, with that surprise which made them round, and that amused gratification which came the length of a smile upon her opened lips, opened with wonder and pleasure, was quite a pleasant sight. She was more like an innocent mother listening to the unsuspected cleverness of her child’s opinions, than to a daughter admiring her mother. Now and then, when Mrs. Joscelyn said something unusually fine, a little snap of a cough came from Joan’s parted lips. She was astonished and she was delighted. “Who would have thought mother had so much in her?” she was saying all the time. She was not in the least handsome; but there was nothing in her that was unpleasant or objectionable; not a harsh line, or a sharp angle, or a twist of feature. Sometimes there is a curve at the corner of a mouth which will spoil the harmony of a face altogether; but Joan had no defect of this kind. She had a dimple in her smooth, round chin, and another in her cheek. When she laughed there were two or