The Project Gutenberg EBook of Joanna Godden, by Sheila Kaye-Smith

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Joanna Godden

Author: Sheila Kaye-Smith

Release Date: May 7, 2005 [EBook #15779]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOANNA GODDEN ***

Produced by Suzanne Shell, Louise Pryor and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.

JOANNA GODDEN

by

Sheila Kaye-Smith

1921

To

W.L. GEORGE

CONTENTS

PART I SHEPHERD'S HEY

PART II FIRST LOVE

PART III THE LITTLE SISTER

PART IV LAST LOVE

NOTE

_Though local names, both of places and people, have been used in this
story, the author states that no reference is intended to any living
person._

JOANNA GODDEN

_PART I_

SHEPHERD'S HEY

Sec.1

Three marshes spread across the triangle made by the Royal Military
Canal and the coasts of Sussex and Kent. The Military Canal runs from
Hythe to Rye, beside the Military Road; between it and the flat, white
beaches of the Channel lie Romney Marsh, Dunge Marsh and Walland Marsh,
from east to west. Walland Marsh is sectored by the Kent Ditch, which
draws huge, straggling diagrams here, to preserve ancient rights of
parishes and the monks of Canterbury. Dunge Marsh runs up into the apex
of the triangle at Dunge Ness, and adds to itself twenty feet of shingle
every year. Romney Marsh is the sixth continent and the eighth wonder of
the world.

The three marshes are much alike; indeed to the foreigner they are all a
single spread of green, slatted with watercourses. No river crosses
them, for the Rother curves close under Rye Hill, though these marshes
were made by its ancient mouth, when it was the River Limine and ran
into the Channel at Old Romney. There are a few big watercourses--the
New Sewer, the Yokes Sewer, the White Kemp Sewer--there are a few white
roads, and a great many marsh villages--Brenzett, Ivychurch, Fairfield,
Snargate, Snave--each little more than a church with a farmhouse or two.
Here and there little deserted chapels lie out on the marsh, officeless
since the days of the monks of Canterbury; and everywhere there are
farms, with hund