“Surelye.”

“I’m going into Folkestone next week, to that shop where I bought my party gown.”

“And I’m going to Mr. Pratt to tell him to put up our banns, or we shan’t have time to be cried three times before the first of June.”

“The first!—­I told you the twenty-fourth.”

“But I’m not going to wait till the twenty-fourth.  You promised me June.”

“But I shan’t have got in my hay, and the shearers are coming on the fourteenth—­you have to book weeks ahead, and that was the only date Harmer had free.”

“Joanna.”

Her name was a summons, almost stern, and she looked up.  She was still sitting at the table, stirring the last of her tea.  He sat under the window on an old sea-chest, and had just lit his pipe.

“Come here, Joanna.”

She came obediently, and sat beside him, and he put his arm round her.  The blue and ruddy flicker of the wreckwood lit up the dark day.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I know now—­there is only one thing between us, and that’s Ansdore.”

“How d’you mean?  It ain’t between us.”

“It is—­again and again you seem to be putting Ansdore in the place of our love.  What other woman on God’s earth would put off her marriage to fit in with the sheep-shearing?”

“I ain’t putting it off.  We haven’t fixed the day yet, and I’m just telling you to fix a day that’s suitable and convenient.”

“You know I always meant to marry you the first week in June.”

“And you know as I’ve told you, that I can’t take the time off then.”

“The time off!  You’re not a servant.  You can leave Ansdore any day you choose.”

“Not when the shearing’s on.  You don’t understand, Martin—­I can’t have all the shearers up and nobody to look after ’em.”

“What about your looker?—­or Broadhurst?  You don’t trust anybody but yourself.”

“You’re just about right—­I don’t.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Not to shear sheep.”

Martin laughed ruefully.

“You’re very sensible, Joanna—­unshakably so.  But I’m not asking you to trust me with the sheep, but to trust me with yourself.  Don’t misunderstand me, dear.  I’m not asking you to marry me at the beginning of the month just because I haven’t the patience to wait till the end.  It isn’t that, I swear it.  But don’t you see that if you fix our marriage to fit in with the farm-work, it’ll simply be beginning things in the wrong way?  As we begin we shall have to go on, and we can’t go on settling and ordering our life according to Ansdore’s requirements—­it’s a wrong principle.  Think, darling,” and he drew her close against his heart, “we shall want to see our children—­and will you refuse, just because that would mean that you would have to lie up and keep quiet and not go about doing all your own business?”

Joanna shivered.

“Oh, Martin, don’t talk of such things.”