“If he’s only taking me to please you,” continued Ellen, “he can just leave me at home to please myself.”

“What nonsense!” cried her sister—­“here have I been racking around for hours just to fix a way of getting you to the show, and now you say you don’t care about it.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Then you should ought to.  I never saw such airs as you give yourself.  Not care about Sanger’s World Wide Show!—­I tell you, you just about shall go to it, ma’am, whether you care about it or not, and Arthur Alce shall take you.”

Thus the treat was arranged, and on Wednesday afternoon Alce drove to the door in his high, two-wheeled dog-cart, and Ellen climbed up beside him, under the supervision of Mrs. Tolhurst, whom Joanna, before setting out for market, had commissioned to “see as she went.”  Not that Joanna could really bring herself to believe that Ellen was truthful in saying she did not care about the show, but she thought it possible that sheer contrariness might keep her away.

Ellen was wearing her darkest, demurest clothes, in emphatic contrast to the ribbons and laces in which Brodnyx and Pedlinge usually went to the fair.  Her hair was neatly coiled under her little, trim black hat, and she wore dark suede gloves and buckled shoes.  Alce felt afraid of her, especially as during the drive she never opened her mouth except in brief response to some remark of his.

Ellen despised Arthur Alce—­she did not like his looks, his old-fashioned side-whiskers and Gladstone collars, or the amount of hair and freckles that covered the exposed portions of his skin.  She despised him, too, for his devotion to Joanna; she did not understand how a man could be inspired with a lifelong love for Joanna, who seemed to her unattractive—­coarse and bouncing.  She also a little resented this devotion, the way it was accepted as an established fact in the neighbourhood, a standing sum to Joanna’s credit.  Of course she was fond of her sister—­she could not help it—­but she would have forgiven her more easily for her ruthless domineering, if she had not also had the advantage in romance.  An admirer who sighed hopelessly after you all your life was still to Ellen the summit of desire.  It was fortunate that she could despise Alce so thoroughly in his person, or else she might have found herself jealous of her sister.

They arrived at Sanger’s in good time for the afternoon performance, and their seats were the best in the tent.  Alce, ever mindful of Joanna, bought Ellen an orange and a bag of bull’s-eyes.  During the performance he was too much engrossed to notice her much—­the elephants, the clowns, the lovely ladies, were as fresh and wonderful to him as to any child present, though as a busy farmer he had long ago discarded such entertainments and would not have gone to-day if it had not been for Ellen, or rather for her sister.  When the interval came, however, he had time to notice his companion, and it seemed to him that she drooped.