"He hasn't half bust me, nor a quarter, neither--and I ain't hanging on to him, as you're elegant enough to say. I keep him as my looker because he's valiant with the sheep and manages 'em as if born to it, and because he minds what I say and doesn't sass me back or meddle, as some I could name. As for being set on him, I'm not so far below myself as all that. You must think unaccountable low of me, Arthur Alce, if you figure I'd get sweet on a man who's courting my chicken-gal, which is what Dick Socknersh is doing." "Courting Martha Tilden?" "Yes, my chicken-gal. And you think I'd look at him!--I!... You must think middling low of me, Arthur Alce ... a man who's courting my chicken-gal." "I'd always thought as Martha Tilden--but you must know best. Well, if he's courting her I hope as he'll marry her soon and show folks they're wrong about him and you." "They should ought to be ashamed of themselves to need showing. I look at a man who's courting my chicken-gal!--I never! I tell you what I'll do--I'll raise his wages, so as he can marry her at once--my chicken-gal--and so as folk ull know that I'm satisfied with him as my looker." And Joanna marched off up the drive, where this conversation had taken place. Sec.17 She raised Socknersh's wages to twenty shillings the next day, and it was not due to any wordy flow of his gratitude that the name of Martha Tilden was not mentioned between them. "Better leave it," thought Joanna to herself, "after all, I'm not sure--and she's a slut. I'd sooner he married a cleaner, steadier sort of gal." Grace Wickens had already departed, her cocoa-making tendencies having lately passed into mania--and her successor was an older woman, a widow, who had fallen on evil days. She was a woman of few words, and Joanna wondered a little when one afternoon she said to her rather anxiously: "I'd lik to speak to you, ma'am--in private, if you please." They went into the larder and Mrs. Tolhurst began: "I hardly lik to say it to you, Miss Joanna, being a single spinster ..." This was a bad beginning, for Joanna flamed at once at the implication that her spinsterhood put her at any disadvantage as a woman of the world. "Don't talk nonsense, Mrs. Tolhurst; I may be unwed as yet, but I'm none of your Misses." "No, ma'am--well, it's about this Martha Tilden--" Joanna started. "What about her?" "Only, ma'am, that she's six months gone." There was no chair in the larder, or Joanna would have fallen into it--instead she staggered back against the shelves, with a great rattle of crockery. Her face was as white as her own plates, and for a moment she could not speak. "I made bold to tell you, Miss Joanna, for all the neighbourhood's beginning to talk--and the gal getting near her time and all.... I thought maybe you'd have noticed.... Don't be in such a terrification about it, Miss Joanna.... I'm sorry I told you--maybe I shud ought to have spuck to the gal fust ..."