Thus things went on, till a certain market-morning brought a new sensation.  Elizabeth and Lucetta were sitting at breakfast when a parcel containing two dresses arrived for the latter from London.  She called Elizabeth from her breakfast, and entering her friend’s bedroom Elizabeth saw the gowns spread out on the bed, one of a deep cherry colour, the other lighter—­a glove lying at the end of each sleeve, a bonnet at the top of each neck, and parasols across the gloves, Lucetta standing beside the suggested human figure in an attitude of contemplation.

“I wouldn’t think so hard about it,” said Elizabeth, marking the intensity with which Lucetta was alternating the question whether this or that would suit best.

“But settling upon new clothes is so trying,” said Lucetta.  “You are that person” (pointing to one of the arrangements), “or you are that totally different person” (pointing to the other), “for the whole of the coming spring and one of the two, you don’t know which, may turn out to be very objectionable.”

It was finally decided by Miss Templeman that she would be the cherry-coloured person at all hazards.  The dress was pronounced to be a fit, and Lucetta walked with it into the front room, Elizabeth following her.

The morning was exceptionally bright for the time of year.  The sun fell so flat on the houses and pavement opposite Lucetta’s residence that they poured their brightness into her rooms.  Suddenly, after a rumbling of wheels, there were added to this steady light a fantastic series of circling irradiations upon the ceiling, and the companions turned to the window.  Immediately opposite a vehicle of strange description had come to a standstill, as if it had been placed there for exhibition.

It was the new-fashioned agricultural implement called a horse-drill, till then unknown, in its modern shape, in this part of the country, where the venerable seed-lip was still used for sowing as in the days of the Heptarchy.  Its arrival created about as much sensation in the corn-market as a flying machine would create at Charing Cross.  The farmers crowded round it, women drew near it, children crept under and into it.  The machine was painted in bright hues of green, yellow, and red, and it resembled as a whole a compound of hornet, grasshopper, and shrimp, magnified enormously.  Or it might have been likened to an upright musical instrument with the front gone.  That was how it struck Lucetta.  “Why, it is a sort of agricultural piano,” she said.

“It has something to do with corn,” said Elizabeth.

“I wonder who thought of introducing it here?”

Donald Farfrae was in the minds of both as the innovator, for though not a farmer he was closely leagued with farming operations.  And as if in response to their thought he came up at that moment, looked at the machine, walked round it, and handled it as if he knew something about its make.  The two watchers had inwardly started at his coming, and Elizabeth left the window, went to the back of the room, and stood as if absorbed in the panelling of the wall.  She hardly knew that she had done this till Lucetta, animated by the conjunction of her new attire with the sight of Farfrae, spoke out:  “Let us go and look at the instrument, whatever it is.”