himself slipping into the
homeliness of her tongue--"I want a good spade and some harness."

"I'll tell you a good shop for harness ..." Joanna loved enlightening
ignorance and guiding inexperience, and while Martin's chop and
potatoes were being brought she held forth on different makes of harness
and called spades spades untiringly. He listened without rancour, for he
was beginning to like her very much. His liking was largely physical--he
wouldn't have believed a month ago that he should ever find Joanna
Godden attractive, but to-day the melting of his prejudice seemed to
come chiefly from her warm beauty, from the rich colouring of her face
and the flying sunniness of her hair, from her wide mouth with its wide
smile, from the broad, strong set of her shoulders, and the sturdy
tenderness of her breast.

She saw that he had changed. His manner was different, more cordial and
simple--the difference between his coldness and his warmth was greater
than in many, for like most romantics he had found himself compelled at
an early age to put on armour, and the armour was stiff and disguising
in proportion to the lightness and grace of the body within. Not that he
and Joanna talked of light and graceful things ... they talked, after
spades and harness, of horses and sheep, and of her ideas on breaking up
grass, which was to be a practical scheme at Ansdore that spring in
spite of the neighbours, of the progress of the new light railway from
Lydd to Appledore, of the advantages and disadvantages of growing
lucerne. But the barrier was down between them, and he knew that they
were free, if they chose, to go on from horses and sheep and railways
and crops to more daring, intimate things, and because of that same
freedom they stuck to the homely topics, like people who are free to
leave the fireside but wait till the sun is warmer on the grass.

He had begun his apple-tart before she rose.

"Well, I must be getting back now. Good-bye, Mr. Trevor. If you should
ever happen to pass Ansdore, drop in and I'll give you a cup of tea."

He was well aware that the whole room had heard this valediction. He saw
some of the men smiling at each other, but he was not annoyed. He rose
and went with her to the door, where she hugged herself into her big
driving coat. Something about her made him feel big enough to ignore the
small gossip of the Marsh.

Sec.9

He liked her now--he told himself that she was good common stuff. She