new that on
the farm and in the market-place they would not be on an equal footing,
whatever they were in the home. As farmer and manager she would outshine
him, whose tastes and interests and experiences were so different. Never
mind--he would have more time to give to the beloved pursuit of
exploring the secret, shy marsh country--he would do all Joanna's
business afield, in the far market towns of New Romney and Dymchurch,
and the farms away in Kent or under the Coast at Ruckinge and Warhorne.

Meanwhile he spent a great deal of his time at Ansdore. He liked the
life of the place with its mixture of extravagance and simplicity,
democracy and tyranny. Fortunately Ellen approved of him--indeed he
sometimes found her patronage excessive. He thought her spoilt and
affected, and might almost have come to dislike her if she had not been
such a pretty, subtle little thing, and if she had not interested and
amused him by her sharp contrasts with her sister. He was now also
amused by the conflicts between the two, which at first had shocked him.
He liked to see Joanna's skin go pink as she faced Ellen in a torment of
loving anger and rattled the fierce words off her tongue, while Ellen
tripped and skipped and evaded and generally triumphed by virtue of a
certain fundamental coolness. "It will be interesting to watch that girl
growing up," he thought.

Sec.15

As the year slid through the fogs into the spring, he persuaded Joanna
to come with him on his rambles on the Marsh. He was astonished to find
how little she knew of her own country, of that dim flat land which was
once under the sea. She knew it only as the hunting ground of her
importance. It was at Yokes Court that she bought her roots, and from
Becket's House her looker had come; Lydd and Rye and Romney were only
market-towns--you did best in cattle at Rye, but the other two were
proper for sheep; Old Honeychild was just a farm where she had bought
some good spades and dibbles at an auction; at Misleham they had once
had foot-and-mouth disease--she had gone to Picknye Bush for the
character of Milly Pump, her chicken-girl....

He told her of the smugglers and owlers who had used the Woolpack as
their headquarters long ago, riding by moonlight to the cross-roads,
with their mouths full of slang--cant talk of "mackerel" and "fencing"
and "hornies" and "Oliver's glim."

"Well, if they talked worse there then than they talk now, they must
have talked very bad