t take my fancy, and I
don't see how I'm ever going to bring myself to do it. That's why it ud
be so fine for me if you had a little one, Ellen--as I could hold and
kiss and care for and feel just as if it was my own."

"Thanks," said Ellen.

Sec.21

The winding up of her plans for her sister made it necessary that Joanna
should cast about for fresh schemes to absorb her energies. The farm
came to her rescue in this fresh, more subtle collapse, and she turned
to it as vigorously as she had turned after Martin's death, and with an
increase of that vague feeling of bitterness which had salted her
relations with it ever since.

A strong rumour was blowing on the Marsh that shortly Great Ansdore
would come into the market. Joanna's schemes at once were given their
focus. She would buy Great Ansdore if she had the chance. She had always
resented its presence, so inaptly named, on the fringe of Little
Ansdore's greatness. If she bought it, she would be adding more than
fifty acres to her own, but it was good land--Prickett was a fool not
to have made more of it--and the possession carried with it manorial
rights, including the presentation of the living of Brodnyx with
Pedlinge. When Joanna owned Great Ansdore in addition to her own
thriving and established patrimony, she would be a big personage on the
Three Marshes, almost "county." No tenant or yeoman from Dymchurch to
Winchelsea, from Romney to the coast, would dare withhold his
respect--she might even at last be admitted a member of the Farmers'
Club....

It was characteristic of her that, with this purchase in view, she made
no efforts to save money. She set out to make it instead, and her
money-making was all of the developing, adventurous kind--she ploughed
more grass, and decided to keep three times the number of cows and open
a milk-round.

As a general practice only a few cows were kept on the Marsh farms, for,
owing to the shallowness of the dykes, it was difficult to prevent their
straying. However, Joanna boldly decided to fence all the Further
Innings. She could spare that amount of grazing, and though she would
have to keep down the numbers of her sheep till after she had bought
Great Ansdore, she expected to make more money out of the milk and dairy
produce--she might even in time open a dairy business in Rye. This would
involve the engaging of an extra girl for the dairy and chickens, and an
extra man to help Broadhurst with the cows, but Joann