That time had scarred her a little--put some lines into the corners of her eyes and straightened the curling corners of her mouth, but it had also heightened the rich healthy colour on her cheeks, enlarged her fine girth, her strength of shoulder and depth of bosom. She did not look any older, because she was so superbly healthy and superbly proud. She knew that the neighbours were impressed by Ansdore's thriving, when they had foretold its downfall under her sway.... She had vindicated her place in her father's shoes, and best of all, she had expiated her folly in the matter of Socknersh, and restored her credit not only in the bar of the Woolpack but in her own eyes. Sec.2 One afternoon, soon after Ellen had gone back to school for her second year, when Joanna was making plum jam in the kitchen, and getting very hot and sharp-tongued in the process, Mrs. Tolhurst saw a man go past the window on his way to the front door. "Lor, miss! There's Parson!" she cried, and the next minute came sounds of struggle with Joanna's rusty door-bell. "Go and see what he wants--take off that sacking apron first--and if he wants to see me, put him into the parlour." Mr. Pratt lacked "visiting" among many other accomplishments as a parish priest--the vast, strewn nature of his parish partly excused him--and a call from him was not the casual event it would have been in many places, but startling and portentous, requiring fit celebration. Joanna received him in state, supported by her father's Bible and stuffed owls. She had kept him waiting while she changed her gown, for like many people who are sometimes very splendid she could also on occasion be extremely disreputable, and her jam-making costume was quite unfit for the masculine eye, even though negligible. Mr. Pratt had grown rather nervous waiting for her--he had always been afraid of her, because of her big, breathless ways, and because he felt sure that she was one of the many who criticized him. "I--I've only come about a little thing--at least it's not a little thing to me, but a very big thing--er--er--" "What is it?" asked Joanna, a stuffed owl staring disconcertingly over each shoulder. "For some time there's been complaints about the music in church. Of course I'm quite sure Mr. Elphick does wonders, and the ladies of the choir are excellent--er--gifted ... I'm quite sure. But the harmonium--it's very old and quite a lot of the notes won't play ... and the bellows ... Mr. Saunders came from Lydd and had a look at it, but he says it's past repair--er--satisfactory repair, and it ud really save money in the long run if we bought a new one." Joanna was a little shocked. She had listened to the grunts and wheezes of the harmonium from her childhood, and the idea of a new one disturbed her--it suggested sacrilege and ritualism and the moving of landmarks. "I like what we've got very well," she said truculently--"It's done for us properly this thirty year."