Edward Huxtable consulted the Act.... "'Notice of objection may be served on the Commissioners within sixty days. If they do not allow the objection, the petitioner may appeal to a referee under the Act, and an appeal by either the petitioner or the Commissioners lies from the referee to the High Court, or where the site value does not exceed L500, to the County Court.' I suppose yours is worth more than L500?" "I should just about think it is--it's worth something more like five thousand if the truth was known." "Well, I shouldn't enlarge on that. Do you think it worth while to serve an objection? No doubt there are grounds on which we could appeal, but they aren't very good, and candidly I think we'd lose. It would cost you a great deal of money, too, before you'd finished." "I don't care about that. I'm not going to sit down quiet and have my rightful belongings taken from me." Edward Huxtable considered that he had done his duty in warning Joanna--lots of lawyers wouldn't have troubled to do that--and after all the old girl had heaps of money to lose. She might as well have her fun and he his fee. "Well, anyhow we'll go as far as the Commissioners. If I were you, I shouldn't apply for total exemption, but for a rebate. We might do something with allowances. Let me see, what did you sell for?"... He finally prepared an involved case, partly depending on the death duties that had already been paid when Joanna inherited Alce's farm, and which he said ought to be considered in calculating increment value. Joanna would not have confessed for worlds that she did not understand the grounds of her appeal, though she wished Edward Huxtable would let her make at least some reference to her steam tractor, and thus win her victory on moral grounds, instead of just through some lawyer's mess. But, moral appeal or lawyer's mess, her case should go to the Commissioners, and if necessary to the High Court. Just because she knew that in her own home and parish the fighting spirit was failing her, Joanna resolved to fight this battle outside it without counting the cost. Sec.8 That autumn she had her first twinge of rheumatism. The days of the marsh ague were over, but the dread "rheumatiz" still twisted comparatively young bones. Joanna had escaped till a later age than many, for her work lay mostly in dry kitchens and bricked yards, and she had had little personal contact with the soil, that odorous sponge of the marsh earth, rank with the soakings of sea-fogs and land-fogs.