in Joan’s way; but it was a great change, an offer as important as if it had come from King Cophetua; far more important indeed, for sensible Joan would have made short work with his majesty. This, however, was the most sensible, the most suitable of arrangements. It was exactly what she would have liked had she exercised the widest choice. The perfect appropriateness of it even subdued the inward mirth with which the idea, when it first presented itself to her mind, had been received. Though she still had a laugh now and then, it was gradually hushed by this conviction. “I thought I might had a waur offer,” she would say to herself now and then. She was like the heroine of that song. Her “braw wooer” was not without a touch of the ridiculous about him. She was disposed to jibe at his good looks, and his politeness, and his fine talk; but notwithstanding:-- “I never let on that I kent or I cared, But I thought I might had a waur offer, waur offer, I thought I might had a waur offer.” Joan was no singer; but it was astonishing how often that refrain came from her lips about this time. She was no singer; but she was a woman who sang at her work, as women used to do more than they do now. Perhaps drawingroom performers sing all the better because our ears have grown more particular; but of all cheerful things in this uncheerful world there are few so pleasant as the half-conscious song with which a cheery worker accompanies his or her occupations. Joan was always giving vent to some snatch of homely music in this way. But at the present moment she confined herself to that refrain: “I thought I might had a waur offer, waur offer. I thought I might had a waur offer. “You are always singing that, Joan,” Mrs. Joscelyn said. “I never hear you sing anything else.” “Am I?” said Joan, with a laugh; and then she grew red, and grave and silent all at once. It was so suitable! Nothing could have been more appropriate. But then, “I’m not partial to him,” she said to herself.