"I'll give him ten shillings," she said to herself--"I'll have given
the most."

Mr. Pratt watched her. He found something stimulating in the sight of
her broad back and shoulders, her large presence had invigorated
him--somehow he felt self-confident, as he had not felt for years, and
he began to talk, first about the harmonium, and then about himself--he
was a widower with three pale little children, whom he dragged up
somehow on an income of two hundred a year.

Joanna was not listening. She was thinking to herself--"My cheque-book
is in the drawer. If I wrote him a cheque, how grand it would look."

Finally she opened the drawer and took the cheques out. After all, she
could afford to be generous--she had nearly a hundred pounds in Lewes
Old Bank, put aside without any scraping for future "improvements." How
much could she spare? A guinea--that would look handsome, among all the
miserable half-crowns....

Mr. Pratt had seen the cheque-book, and a stutter came into his speech--

"So good of you, Miss Godden ... to help me ... encouraging, you
know ... been to so many places, a tiring afternoon ... feel rewarded."

She suddenly felt her throat grow tight; the queer compassion had come
back. She saw him trotting forlornly round from farm to farm, begging
small sums from people much better off than himself, receiving denials
or grudging gifts ... his boots were all over dust, she had noticed them
on her carpet. Her face flushed, as she suddenly dashed her pen into the
ink, wrote out the cheque in her careful, half-educated hand, and gave