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Mrs. Joyce was a tall, large woman with sandy hair, from which the sun now brought out pretty lights. She had the temper which usually accompanies such hair, easily roused and as easily appeased. The mere sight of these yellow, fluffy chickens, the consciousness of the sunshine, and the fragrance, and suggestiveness, had filled her with a kind of hazy content. The wall-flowers yonder under the kitchen windows were already ablow, she observed. The pigs, too, were coming on nicely; the calf, which was bleating not unmusically in one of the outhouses, had had the good sense to be a heifer. Altogether Mrs. Joyce felt that the world was not a bad place and that life was worth living.

She was in this frame of mind when, chancing to raise her eyes, she saw the figure of Shepherd Robbins shambling slowly down the steep “pinch” of road that led to the farm gate. Perhaps it was the sudden contrast between that gaunt form, that haggard, melancholy face, and the surrounding brightness and prosperity that moved her, perhaps because, being a good-hearted woman in the main, she shared her husband’s regret at the course events were taking; in any case at sight of him her anger melted away, and a flood of genuine pity swept over her heart.