guardian eye for all the village maidens, met the pair and eyed the girl
severely.

Later in the day she came on Boy alone and stopped her.

"Do you know that man, Joyce?" she asked.

Mrs. Haggard was the one person in the world who called Boy by her
Christian name. And she did it, as she did everything else, on
principle.

"Not really," answered Boy.

"I don't like him," said Mrs. Haggard.

"Neither do I," answered the girl.

"I'm glad to hear it," said the other. "He's _not_ a nice man."

That evening Mrs. Haggard went to see Mrs. Woodburn and gave the
trainer's wife some of her reasons--and they were good reasons,
too--for thinking Mr. Joses _not_ a nice man.

Mrs. Woodburn, who was in the judgment of the vicar's wife a good but
curious woman, showed herself distressingly undistressed.

"Boy can look after herself, I guess," she said, a thought grimly.

She reported later to Mat what Mrs. Haggard had told her and what she
had replied to Mrs. Haggard.