"We will adjourn to the sitting-room after dinner," Miss Falconer said. "I am glad to be spared coming down twice in the day. It was fortunate that I was seated in this room yesterday when Mrs. More called; she could not have mounted the stairs. Oh! here is Charlotte. Now we will sit down to the table; say grace, dear Charlotte."
Charlotte obeyed, and then the cover was lifted from a fowl, done to a turn; and Patty handed round the vegetables, and poured out cider for Miss Falconer, while Charlotte had a glass of port-wine, as she had been rather "below par" for a day or two; and Joyce drank water from preference.
Before the meal was concluded, Miss Falconer had decided that she would write to Mrs. More, and propose that her niece from Fair Acres should accept her invitation to Barley Wood, at such time as might be most convenient to her to arrange it. She did not tell Joyce of this decision, but she considered by making it she was conferring a real favour on the "little rustic," whose beauty she was inwardly comparing to that of a wild rose; scarcely the drooping rose of Charlotte's poem!
The two girls set out, soon after dinner, for the market-place, where the shops were situated. The market-place at Wells is not without its picturesque features; old gabled houses skirt the north side and part of the south side, while a cross stands at the bottom of the square. Clear water, from one of the many springs, which first attracted the College of Priests, in the time of Alfred's son Edward, to found their religious house in Wells, makes soft music as it runs down the streets in crystal streams. Two quaint archways, or, as they were in old documents called, the Palace Eye and the Deanery Eye, stand at the head of the market-square, and between them are two ancient houses, one of which was built by Bishop Beckington, and has rooms over the porch, or gateway, through which foot-passengers pass into the Cathedral Green.
There is a delightful sense that life flows easily and peacefully at Wells by the appearance of its citizens. The master of the large shop where the two girls stopped, was standing complacently at the door, his hands in his pockets, calmly surveying the rush of the cathedral choristers across the square, for the first chime had sounded for afternoon service.
Joyce was known as Squire Falconer's daughter at Fair Acres, and treated
with respect. She was conducted to a counter at the end of the dark, low shop, where the head shopwoman waited on her. Joyce's list of commissions was for the most part of the homely and useful kind; but Charlotte was attracted by a display of gauze ribbons, then greatly in fashion, for the large loops worn on the crown of gipsy bonnets. She was not proof against buying two yards of straw-coloured ribbon with a blue edge, and when the ring was pulled down the ends of her purse again, it slipped off, for there was nothing left in it.
The Market Place, Wells.
"Look, Joyce, what lovely ribbon! Do get some, Joyce."