well-boiled leg of one that had trod the Southdowns but a week before
in all the pride of lusty life. There was a silence for a moment.

"You will, as usual, take the fat?" queried Sir JOHN.

"Lean for me to-day," retorted JOANNA, with one of her bright flashes.

"Nay, nay," said her husband, "that were against tradition, which
assigns to you the fat."

JOANNA pouted. Her mind rebelled against dictation. Besides, were not
her aphorisms superior to those of her husband? The cold face of Sir
JOHN grew eloquent in protest. She paused, and then with one wave of
her stately arm swept mutton, platter, knife, fork, and caper sauce
into the lap of Sir JOHN, whence the astonished BINNS, gasping in
pain, with much labour rescued them. JOANNA had disappeared in a
flame of mocking laughter, and was heard above calling on her maid
for salts. But Sir JOHN ere yet the sauce had been fairly scraped
from him, unclasped his note-book, and with trembling fingers wrote
therein, "POOLE's master-pieces are ever at the mercy of an angry
woman."

CHAPTER V.

But the world is hard, and there was little mercy shown for JOANNA's
freak. Her husband had slain her. That was all. She with her flashes,
her gaiety, her laughter, was consigned to dust. But in Sir JOHN's
note-book it was written that, "The hob-nailed boot is but a bungling
weapon. The drawing-room poker is better."