One afternoon, on a day which had seen one of Gilbert's unopened letters destroyed, Joan and Miss Abercrombie started out together soon after tea to take a basin of jelly to one of Aunt Janet's pet invalids who lived in a cottage away out at what was called the Four Cross Roads. It was one of those very fine blue days common to September. Just a nip of cold in the air, the forerunner of winter, and overhead the leaves on the trees turning all their various reds and golds for autumn. "The sky gives one a great sense of distance this afternoon," Miss Abercrombie said presently. "You never see a sky like this in towns; that is why you get into the habit of thinking things out of proportion." "What makes you say that?" asked Joan; "I mean, how does the distance of the sky affect it?" "Oh, well, it makes one feel small," the other answered, "unimportant; as if the affairs that worry our hearts out are, after all, of very little consequence in the scheme of existence." "They are our life," Joan argued, "one has to worry and work things out for oneself." "You are a Browningite," laughed Miss Abercrombie; she glanced up sideways at her companion. "'As it were better youth Should strive through acts uncouth Towards making, than repose on aught found made.' He is right in a way, though, mind you, I don't know that it pays women to do much in the struggling line." "I do wonder why you say that," said Joan; "you have always struck me as being, above everything else, a fighter." "Probably why my advice lies along other directions," admitted Miss Abercrombie; "it is extremely uncomfortable to be a pioneer." "But in the end, even if you have won nothing, it brings you the courage of having stuck to your convictions." "Yes," Miss Abercrombie answered dryly, "it certainly brings you that." They walked in silence again for a while, turning into a short cut to their destination across the fields. "Your aunt has got convictions too." Miss Abercrombie reopened the conversation, evidently her thoughts had been working along the same lines. "They are uncomfortable things; witness the judgment she metes out to that unfortunate girl in the village." "You mean Bridget?" Joan's voice had suddenly a touch of fear in it; Miss Abercrombie stole a quick look at her. "I was asking Mary about her the other day." "Immorality, your aunt calls it," sniffed Miss Abercrombie, "and for that she would quite willingly, good, kind woman as she is, make this child--Bridget is seventeen, you know--an outcast for the rest of her life. Immorality!" "What would you call it?" questioned Joan; she spoke stiffly, for she was singularly uneasy under the discussion, yet she had always wanted to argue the matter out with Miss Abercrombie.