"I'll do my best, for you've worked well on the whole, and I shan't
forget that Orpington hen you saved when she was egg-bound. But don't
you think, Martha," she added seriously, "that I'm holding with any of
your goings-on. I'm shocked and ashamed at you, for you've done
something very wicked--something that's spoken against in the Bible, and
in church too--it's in the Ten Commandments. I wonder you could kneel in
your place and say 'Lord have mercy upon us,' knowing what you'd been up
to"--Martha's tears flowed freely--"and it's sad to think you've kept
yourself straight for years as you say, and then gone wrong at last,
just because you hadn't patience to wait for your lawful wedding ... and
all the scandal there's been and ull be, and folks talking at you and at
me ... and you be off now, and tell Mrs. Tolhurst you're to have the
cream on your milk and take it before it's skimmed."




§18

For the rest of the day Joanna was in a strange fret--dreams seemed to
hang over life like mist, there was sorrow in all she did, and yet a
queer, suffocating joy. She told herself that she was upset by Martha's
revelation, but at the same time she knew it had upset her not so much
in itself as in the disturbing new self-knowledge it had brought. She
could not hide from herself that she was delighted, overjoyed to find
that her shepherd did not love her chicken-girl, that the thoughts she
had thought about them for nine months were but vain thoughts.

Was it true, then, that she was moving along that road which the
villages had marked out for her--the road which would end before the