Joanna Godden | Page 5

last by some remark on the
price of wool or the Rye United's last match. Everybody was sorry for
Alce, everybody thought that Thomas Godden had treated him badly by
not making his daughter marry him as a condition of her inheritance.
"Three times he's asked her, as I know for certain," said Vennal, the

tenant of Beggar's Bush.
"No, it's four," said Prickett, Joanna's neighbour at Great Ansdore,
"there was that time coming back from the Wild Beast Show."
"I was counting that," said Vennal; "that and the one that Mr. Vine's
looker heard at Lydd market, and then that time in the house."
"How do you know he asked her in the house?--that makes five."
"I don't get that--once indoors and twice out, that's three."
"Well, anyways, whether it's three or four or five, he's asked her quite
enough. It's time he had her now."
"He won't get her. She'll fly higher'n him now she's got Ansdore. She'll
be after young Edward Huxtable, or maybe Parson himself, him having
neglected to keep himself married."
"Ha! Ha! It ud be valiant to see her married to liddle Parson--she'd
forget herself and pick him up under her arm, same as she picks up her
sister. But anyways I don't think she'll get much by flying high. It's all
fine enough to talk of her having Ansdore, but whosumdever wants
Ansdore ull have to take Joanna Godden with it, and it isn't every man
who'd care to do that."
"Surelye. She's a mare that's never bin präaperly broken in. D'you
remember the time she came prancing into church with a bustle stuck
on behind, and everyone staring and fidgeting so as pore Mus' Pratt lost
his place in the Prayers and jumped all the way from the Belief to the
Royal Family?"
"And that time as she hit Job Piper over the head wud a bunch of osiers
just because he'd told her he knew more about thatching than she did."
"Surelye, and knocked his hat off into the dyke, and then bought him a
new one, with a lining to it."
"And there was that time when--"

Several more anecdotes to the point were contributed by the various
patrons of the bar, before the conversation, having described a full
circle, returned to its original starting point, and then set off again with
its vitality apparently undiminished. It was more than a week before the
summons of Mr. Gain, of Botolph's Bridge, for driving his gig without
a light ousted Joanna from her central glory in the Woolpack's
discussions.
At Ansdore itself the interest naturally lasted longer. Joanna's
dependents whether in yard or kitchen were resentfully engrossed in the
new conditions.
"So Joanna's going to run our farm for us, is she?" said the head man,
old Stuppeny, "that'll be valiant, wud some of the notions she has.
She'll have our pläace sold up in a twelve-month, surelye. Well, well,
it's time maybe as I went elsewheres--I've bin long enough at this job."
Old Stuppeny had made this remark at intervals for the last sixty years,
indeed ever since the day he had first come as a tow-headed boy to
scare sparrows from the fields of Joanna's grandfather; so no one gave
it the attention that should have been its due. Other people aired their
grievances instead.
"I wöan't stand her meddling wud me and my sheep," said Fuller, the
shepherd.
"It's her sheep, come to that," said Martha Tilden the chicken-girl.
Fuller dealt her a consuming glance out of his eyes, which the long
distances of the marsh had made keen as the sea wind.
"She döan't know nothing about sheep, and I've been a looker after
sheep since times when you and her was in your cradles, so I wöan't
täake sass from neither of you."
"She'll meddle wud you, Martha, just as she'll meddle wud the rest of
us," said Broadhurst, the cowman.

"She's meddled wud me for years--I'm used to it. It's you men what's
going to have your time now. Ha! Ha! I'll be pleased watching it."
Martha's short, brightly-coloured face seemed ready to break in two as
she laughed with her mouth wide open.
"When she's had a terrification wud me and said things as she's sorry
for, she'll give me a gownd of hers or a fine hat. Sometimes I think as I
make more out of her tempers than I do out of my good work what she
pays me wages for."
"Well, if I wur a decent maid I'd be ashamed to wear any of her
outlandish gowns or hats. The colours she chooses! Sometimes when I
see her walking through a field near the lambing time, I'm scared for
my ewes, thinking they'll drop their lambs out of fright. I can't help
being thankful