Jane’s lover, the young carpenter, came regularly once a week, and stayed about two hours. Mrs. Challoner saw him once or twice, when household business took her to the kitchen, during his visits. He looked a dull, decent young man, with a shock of red hair and a smooth boyish face. He sat close beside the fire, even when the spring evenings had grown warm. Lucy addressed him with a cheerful “Good evening,” and made one or two slight remarks about the weather, to which he made little response save a movement of the lips, and a glance towards the area-window. He did not rise when Lucy entered the kitchen, but that rudeness seemed due only to shyness or slowness, for he always rose a few minutes afterwards and remained standing for the rest of her stay. Altogether, Lucy decided that he was not very bright; he was by no means one of those young working men who come to the front at evening colleges and clubs, and are the moving spirits of their trades’ union. All the more, he seemed a fit enough match for Jane, who would have been indeed a hopeless drag on the life of any rising man. Sitting in her dining-room, Lucy could hear through its floor the sound of the voices in the kitchen, though the words, of course, were inaudible. The conversation of these courting evenings did not seem very lively. Jane said a few words, and the gruffer voice replied with a monosyllable, and then there would be a long pause, and presently the performance would be repeated. But one evening a week or two after Easter, the conversation seemed to have grown much livelier. It was the man who had the most to say, and he spoke faster and in a higher key than before. “Is he waking up at last?” thought unsuspicious Lucy, “or is it possible that they have had a little tiff, and that he is defending himself or scolding her? Perhaps he does not like her new bonnet.” For Lucy had seen Jane go out on the previous Sunday evening in fresh and gorgeous spring attire, her neat brown dress and black jacket crowned by an incompatible hat, round whose crown pink, green and blue roses, feathers and rosettes “screamed” loudly at each other. Lucy had thought to herself that her mother, in the old days, would at once have “put her foot down” on such headgear, but Lucy’s own sense of fairness rebelled against any arbitrary interference with a girl’s taste in dress (when going about her own business) simply because the girl was in her wage-paid service at other times. “I have seen Florence in hats I have liked as little, though they were different,” thought Lucy. “I know many mistresses can’t bear their servants to copy their style of dress—dear mother would have regarded it as an unpardonable impertinence—but I should be only too proud and happy if my servants would copy mine! Pollie was turning in that direction—with just a few extra bows and flowers, and silk velvet ribbon where I put modest braid!”