By Christmas Day things had righted themselves a little. Ellen was too young to sulk more than a day or two, and she began to forget her grievances in the excitement of the festival. There was the usual communal midday dinner, with Arthur Alce back in his old place at Joanna's right hand. Alce had behaved like a gentleman, and refused to take back the silver tea set, his premature wedding gift. Then in the evening, Joanna gave a party, at which young Vines and Southlands and Furneses offered their sheepish admiration to her sister Ellen. Of course everyone was agreed that Ellen Godden gave herself lamentable airs, but she appealed to her neighbours' curiosity through her queer, exotic ways, and the young men found her undeniably beautiful--she had a thick, creamy skin, into which her childhood's roses sometimes came as a dim flush, and the younger generation of the Three Marshes was inclined to revolt from the standards of its fathers. So young Stacey Vine kissed her daringly under the mistletoe at the passage bend, and was rewarded with a gasp of sweet scent, which made him talk a lot at the Woolpack. While Tom Southland, a man of few words, went home and closed with his father's offer of a partnership in his farm, which hitherto he had thought of setting aside in favour of an escape to Australia. Ellen was pleased at the time, but a night's thought made her scornful. "Don't you know any really nice people?" she asked Joanna. "Why did you send me to school with gentlemen's daughters if you just meant me to mix with common people when I came out?" "You can mix with any gentlefolk you can find to mix with. I myself have been engaged to marry a gentleman's son, and his father would have come to my party if he hadn't been away for Christmas." She felt angry and sore with Ellen, but she was bound to admit that her grievance had a certain justification. After all, she had always meant her to be a lady, and now, she supposed, she was merely behaving like one. She cast about her for means of introducing her sister into the spheres she coveted ... if only Sir Harry Trevor would come home!--But she gathered there was little prospect of that for some time. Then she thought of Mr. Pratt, the rector.... It was the first time that she had ever considered him as a social asset--his poverty, his inefficiency and self-depreciation had quite outweighed his gentility in her ideas; he had existed only as the Voice of the Church on Walland Marsh, and the spasmodic respect she paid him was for his office alone. But now she began to remember that he was an educated man and a gentleman, who might supply the want in her sister's life without in any way encouraging those more undesirable "notions" she had picked up at school.