“She is a beauty and no mistake,” she thought to herself; “I never saw such another in all my born days. Her mother was well enough, but she wasn’t in it with Joan; and what’s more, I like her pride. Why should she take that canting chap if she don’t want to? I’m paid to back him, and a day’s work for a day’s wage, that’s my motto. But I’d rather see her marry the Captain, and sit in the church a lady, with a fur round her neck and a carriage waiting outside, than snuffle in a chapel praising the Lord with a pack of oily-faced children. If she had the go of a heifer calf, she would marry him though; he is bound to be a baronet, and it would make a ladyship of her, which with a little teaching is just what she is fit to be; for if he ain’t almost as sweet on her and small wonder after all that nursing as she is on him, I was born in the Flegg Hundred, that’s all. But go is just what Joan ain’t got, not when she can make anything for herself out of it anyway; she’d do what you like for love, but she wouldn’t turn her finger round a teacup to crown herself a queen. Well, there is no helping them as won’t help themselves, so I am all for Samuel Rock and a hundred pounds in my pocket, especially as I dare say that I can screw another hundred out of him if I square Joan, to say nothing of a trifle from the Captain over and above the board for holding my tongue. I suppose he will marry old Levinger’s girl, the Captain will; a pale, puling-faced thing she is, and full of soft words as a boiled potato with flour, but she’s got plenty of that as will make her look rosy to any landlord in these times. Still, hang me, if I was a man, if I wouldn’t rather take Joan and those brown eyes of hers, and snap my fingers at the world, the flesh, and the devil.” Who or what Mrs. Gillingwater meant by “the world, the flesh, and the devil” is not quite evident, but certainly they symbolised persons or conveyed some image to her mind in this connection, for, suiting the action to the word, she snapped her fingers thrice at the empty air, and then sought her bonnet prior to some private expedition in pursuance of pleasure, or more probably of profit. CHAPTER XIV. SOWING THE WIND. Joan went to her room and took off her wet things, for she was soaked to the skin, clothing herself anew in her Sunday dress a soft grey garment, with little frills about the neck and wrists. Then she brushed her waving brown hair, twisting it into a loose knot at the back of her head; and, though she did not think of it, no style could have been more becoming to her. Her toilet completed, a few minutes after her aunt had left the house, she went to the parlour to get herself some tea, of which she drank two or three cups, for she felt unusually thirsty, but she could scarcely swallow a mouthful. The food seemed to choke her, and when she attempted to eat the effort brought on a feeling of dizziness and a tingling sensation in her limbs.