She went away, her stick supporting her, her eyes still searching the little leaves and low plants on each side of the garden path and the faint, winding track between gate and forest road. Joan, in the doorway, let her distaff fall and sat pondering, her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, and her grey eyes upon the fruit trees. “Shall I tell father—or shall I not tell father? If I tell him, he will say she must not come again.... And how am I going to help her coming again?” In the end, she determined to tell her father, but to represent to him how hard it was going to be—and how it seemed to her poor-spirited, loveless, and mean—And as she got this far, she saw another visitor coming. She knew this visitor, and springing up, went to the gate to greet her. Before she left this countryside she had often, of Sundays in Hawthorn Church, sat beside Alison Inch, the sempstress’s daughter. And after she went to the castle Alison had twice been with her mother to the town, and they had climbed the hill to the castle wood and the huntsman’s house to see their old neighbours, though, indeed, they had not been such near neighbours. Alison was older than she, but at the castle hers had been the advantage, she being at home with a number of goodly things, and Alison showing herself somewhat shy and deferential. But now the castle and the park and her uncle’s house were a dream, and Joan was back in Heron’s cottage that was not on the whole so good as the Inches’ nor so near the village. Moreover, she was now almost a stranger, and knowledge and familiarity with all matters were on Alison’s side, to say nothing of her year or two longer in the world. Alison felt her advantages, and was not averse to the other’s recognition of them. Joan and she kissed, then moved somewhat saunteringly up the path to the doorstone. “Mother and I went to take her new smocks to Madam Carthew, and then when we came back it was so fine, and mother said that she would go to see Margery Herd, and if I chose I might walk on here.—The place looks,” said Alison, “as though you had never gone away.” “Nay, there are things yet to do,” said Joan, “and that though we’ve been here well-nigh a month. You would not think how hard it is to get back the gear we left with folk! They had the use until we came back, and they knew that we would come back—but now you might think that we were asking their things instead of our own! Three women have looked as black at me! We got our churn but yesterday, and the forester’s wife still has our beehives. A dozen of her own, and when we ask for our poor three back again, you might suppose we’d offered to steal the thatch from over her head!” They sat down, facing each other, on the sunflecked doorstone. Alison looked about her. “I’ve never seen daffodillies bloom like these!—Joan, I heard a story on thee the other day.” “What story?” “They said thou hadst a lover in the town—a vintner.” “I never had a lover, town or country.”