Anne came slowly forward from the back room, where she had been sitting, busily engaged in needle work. She was a tall, fair girl, with regular features, blue eyes, and a face which would have been both handsome and engaging but for its formal, repressed, and self-conscious expression. She looked like one who would never make a natural or spontaneous movement, or speak a word without thinking over all its possible consequences at least twice beforehand. She presented the greatest possible contrast to her jolly, cheerful father, as well as to her maiden cousin Cicely, who now came bustling in, carrying a goodly pasty, which, if it were the smaller of two or three, spoke well for the size of Master Lucas' oven. She was thin and wrinkled as a last year's russet apple, but her somewhat hard features were lighted up with good-humored smiles, and the roses of her youth were well dried into her cheeks. "Lackaday!" she exclaimed, in a clear, high-pitched voice. "And so our lad has gained the prize. Lady! But who would have thought it, and he so mum and quiet about it all the time! Well, well! Would his dear mother had lived to see the day! But doubtless it is better as it is. What shall I do with the pasty, Master Lucas?" "Pop it in Mary Brent's basket, to be sure," replied the baker. "What better place could there be? Nay, dame, you must needs take it, or you and I shall fall out. Yourself and the young ones must keep Jack's feast—eh, my lad?" Mary Brent said no more in opposition, but withdrew with a far brighter face than she came in. "And that's just like you, Master Lucas, and a good deed too," said Cicely. "Poor woman, I fear she often has short commons at home these days." "Well, I must say, I wonder my father should give so largely to her—a woman whose husband died without the sacrament, and suspected strongly of heresy," said Anne. "And suppose her husband was a heretic, is that any reason his widow should starve?" demanded her father with some heat. "Or is there any reason why I should not do what I will with mine own, or why my own daughter should take me to task in the open shop?" Anne colored deeply. "I meant no offence, father, only—" "Only thou art a peevish wench, and I am a fool to be ruffled by thee," said the baker, recovering his good humor. "Come, look at Jack's medal." Anne regarded the medal with a mournful expression, not as if she were at all interested in it, but as obeying a command of her father's. "Tis a great honor, no doubt," said she, "but the honors of this world are hardly worth striving after."