Dinner was ready in the kitchen, and they all went in, Joanna having taken off her coat and hat and smoothed her hair.  Before they sat down there were introductions to Arthur Alce and to Luck and Broadhurst and Stuppeny and the other farm people.  The relation between employer and employed was at once more patriarchal and less sharply defined at Ansdore than it was at North Farthing—­Martin tried to picture his father sitting down to dinner with the carter and the looker and the housemaid ... it was beyond imagination, yet Joanna did it quite naturally.  Of course there was a smaller gulf between her and her people—­the social grades were inclined to fuse on the Marsh, and the farmer was only just better than his looker—­but on the other hand, she seemed to have far more authority....

“Now, hold your tongues while I say grace,” she cried.

Joanna carved the turkeys, refusing to deputise either to Martin or to Alce.  At the same time she led a general kind of conversation.  The Christmas feast was to be communal in spirit as well as in fact—­there were to be no formalities above the salt or mutterings below it.  The new harmonium provided a good topic, for everyone had heard it, except Mrs. Tolhurst who had stayed to keep watch over Ansdore, cheering herself with the prospect of carols in the evening.

“It sounded best in the psalms,” said Wilson, Joanna’s looker since Socknersh’s day—­“oh, the lovely grunts it made when it said—­’Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee!”

“So it did,” said Broadhurst, “but I liked it best in the Herald Angels.”

“I liked it all through,” said Milly Pump, the chicken-girl.  “And I thought Mr. Elphick middling clever to make it sound as if it wur playing two different tunes at the same time.”

“Was that how it sounded?” asked Mrs. Tolhurst wistfully, “maybe they’ll have it for the carols to-night.”

“Surelye,” said old Stuppeny, “you’d never have carols wudout a harmonister.  I’d lik myself to go and hear it, but doubt if I ull git so far wud so much good victual inside me.”

“No, you won’t—­not half so far,” said Joanna briskly, “you stop at home and keep quiet after this, or you’ll be having bad dreams to-night.”

“I never do but have one kind o’ dream,” said old Stuppeny, “I dream as I’m setting by the fire and a young gal brings me a cup of cocoa.  ’Tis but an old dream, but reckon the Lord God sends the old dreams to the old folk—­all them new dreams that are about on the Marsh, they goes to the young uns.”

“Well, you’ve no call to complain of your dreams, Stuppeny,” said Wilson, “’tisn’t everyone who has the luck to dream regular of a pretty young gal.  Leastways, I guess she’s pretty, though you aeun’t said it.”

“I doean’t take much count on her looks—­’tis the cocoa I’m after, though it aeun’t often as the Lord God lets the dream stay till I’ve drunk my cup.  Sometimes ’tis my daughter Nannie wot brings it, but most times ’tis just some unacquainted female.”