Joan Mardle had reached forty in the leisurely untroubled fashion of a woman who intends to be comely and attractive at fifty.

She cultivated a jovial, almost joyous manner, with a top-dressing of hearty good will and good nature which disarmed strangers and recent acquaintances; on getting to know her better they hastily re-armed themselves.

Some one had once aptly described her as a hedgehog with the protective mimicry of a puffball.

If there was an awkward remark to be made at an inconvenient moment before undesired listeners, Joan invariably made it, and when the occasion did not present itself she was usually capable of creating it.
She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that a dashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in the habit of travelling on his particular highway.

A great-aunt on her mother's side of the family had married so often that Joan imagined herself justified in claiming cousin-ship with a large circle of disconnected houses, and treating them all on a relationship footing, which theoretical kinship enabled her to exact luncheons and other accommodations under the plea of keeping the lamp of family life aglow.
"I felt I simply had to come to-day," she chuckled at Yeovil; "I was just dying to see the returned traveller.