“Well, now’s your time, young lady.  I shan’t have to be home for an hour or two yet.  The first thing is, I suppose, for me to find you a bailiff for this farm.”

“No, thank you kindly.  I’ll manage that.”

“What!  Do you know of a man?”

“No—­I mean I’ll manage the farm.”

“You!  My dear Miss Joanna ...”

“Well, why not?  I’ve been bred up to it from a child.  I used to do everything with poor father.”

As she said the last word her brightness became for a moment dimmed, and tears swam into her eyes for the first time since she had taken the ceremonial handkerchief away from them.  But the next minute she lighted up again.

“He showed me a lot—­he showed me everything.  I could do it much better than a man who doesn’t know our ways.”

“But—­” the lawyer hesitated, “but it isn’t just a question of knowledge, Miss Joanna; it’s a question of—­how shall I put it?—­well, of authority.  A woman is always at a disadvantage when she has to command men.”

“I’d like to see the man I couldn’t make mind me.”

Huxtable grinned.  “Oh, I’ve no doubt whatever that you could get yourself obeyed; but the position—­the whole thing—­you’d find it a great strain, and people aren’t as a rule particularly helpful to a woman they see doing what they call a man’s job.”

“I don’t want anyone’s help.  I know my own business and my poor father’s ways.  That’s enough for me.”

“Did your father ever say anything to you about this?”

“Oh no—­he being only fifty-one and never thinking he’d be took for a long while yet.  But I know it’s what he’d have wanted, or why did he trouble to show me everything?  And always talked to me about things as free as he did to Fuller and Stuppeny.”

“He would want you to do the best for yourself—­he wouldn’t want you to take up a heavy burden just for his sake.”

“Oh, it ain’t just for his sake, it’s for my own.  I don’t want a strange man messing around, and Ansdore’s mine, and I’m proud of it.”

Huxtable rubbed his large nose, from either side of which his sharp eyes looked disapprovingly at Joanna.  He admired her, but she maddened him by refusing to see the obvious side of her femininity.

“Most young women of your age have other things to think of besides farming.  There’s your sister, and then—­don’t tell me that you won’t soon be thinking of getting married.”

“Well, and if I do, it’ll be time enough then to settle about the farm.  As for Ellen, I don’t see what difference she makes, except that I must see to things for her sake as well as mine.  It wouldn’t help her much if I handed over this place to a man who’d muddle it all up and maybe bring us to the Auctioneer’s.  I’ve known ...  I’ve seen ... they had a bailiff in at Becket’s House and he lost them three fields of lucerne the first season, and got the fluke into their sheep.  Why, even Sir Harry Trevor’s taken to managing things himself at North Farthing after the way he saw they were doing with, that old Lambarde, and what he can do I can do, seeing I wasn’t brought up in a London square.”