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 PART III

THE LITTLE SISTER

§ 1

many months Ansdore was a piece of wreckage to which a drowning woman clung. Joanna's ship had foundered—the high-castled, seaworthy ship of her life—and she drifted through the dark seas, clinging only to this which had once been so splendid in the midst of her decks, but was now mere wreckage, the least thing saved. If she let go she would drown. So she trailed after Ansdore, and at last it brought her a kind of anchorage, not in her native land, but at least in no unkind country of adoption. During the last weeks of Martin's wooing, she had withdrawn herself a little from the business of the farm, into a kind of overlordship, from which she was far more free to detach herself than from personal service. Now she went back to work with her hands—she did not want free hours, either for his company or for her own dreams; she rose early, because she waked early and must rise when she waked, and she went round waking the girls, hustling the men, putting her own hand to the milking or the cooking, more sharp-tongued than ever, less tolerant, but more terribly alive, with a kind of burning, consuming life that vexed all those about her.

"She spicks short wud me," said old Stuppeny, "and I've töald her as she mun look around fur a new head man. This time I'm going." 147