It was the first time that the Squire had been to the Farmers’ Club Dinner.  Up till then no one had taken him seriously as a farmer.  For a year or two after his arrival in the neighbourhood he had managed the North Farthing estate through a bailiff, and on the latter’s turning out unsatisfactory, had dismissed him, and at the same time let off a good part of the land, keeping only a few acres for cow-grazing round the house.  Now, on his son’s coming home and requiring an outdoor life, he had given a quarter’s notice to the butcher-grazier to whom he had sub-let his innings, had bought fifty head of sheep, and joined the Farmers’ Club—­which he knew would be a practical step to his advantage, as it brought certain privileges in the way of marketing and hiring.  Joanna was glad to see him at the Woolpack, because she knew that there was now a chance of the introduction she had unfortunately missed in Pedlinge village a few weeks ago.  She had a slight market-day acquaintance with the Old Squire—­as the neighbourhood invariably called him, to his intense annoyance—­and now she greeted him with her broad smile.

“Good evening, Sir Harry.”

“Good evening, Miss Godden.  I’m pleased to see you here.  You’re looking very well.”

His bold tricky eyes swept over her, and somehow she felt more gratified than by all the bulging glances of the other men.

“I’m pleased to see you, too, Sir Harry.  I hear you’ve joined the Club.”

“Surelye—­as a real farmer ought to say; and so has my son Martin—­he’s going to do most of the work.  Martin, you’ve never met Miss Godden.  Let me introduce you.”

Joanna’s welcoming grin broke itself on the young man’s stiff bow.  There was a moment’s silence.

“He doesn’t look as if a London doctor had threatened him with consumption,” said the Squire banteringly.  “Sometimes I really don’t, think I believe it—­I think he’s only come down here so as he can look after me.”

Martin made some conventional remark.  He was a tall, broadly built young man, with a dark healthy skin and that generally robust air which sometimes accompanies extreme delicacy in men.

“The doctor says he’s been overworking,” continued his father, “and that he ought to try a year’s outdoor life and sea air.  If you ask me, I should say he’s overdone a good many things besides work—­” he threw the boy a defiant, malicious glance, rather like a child who gets a thrust into an elder—­“but Walland Marsh is as good a cure for over-play as for over-work.  Not much to keep him up late hereabouts, is there, Miss Godden?”

“I reckon it’ll be twelve o’clock before any of us see our pillows to-night,” said Joanna.

“Tut!  Tut I What terrible ways we’re getting into, just when I’m proposing the place as a rest-cure.  How do you feel, Miss Godden, being the only woman guest?”

“I like it.”

“Bet you do—­so do we.”

Joanna laughed and bridled.  She felt proud of her position—­she pictured every farmer’s wife on the Marsh lying awake that night so that she could ask her husband directly he came upstairs how Joanna Godden had looked, what she had said, and what she had worn.