"That's just about it--he's like another sheep, so they ain't scared of
him, but he can do no more for 'em than another sheep could, neither.
He's ignorant--he's got no sense nor know, or he'd never have let you
breed with them Spanishes, or given 'em a poisonous double-dip--and he's
always having sway-backs up at market, too, and tic and hoose and
fluke.... Oh, Joanna, if you're any bit wise you'll get shut of him
before he messes you all up. And you know what folks say--they say you'd
have got shut of him months agone if you hadn't been so unaccountable
set on him, so as they say--yes, they say one day you'll marry him and
make him master of Ansdore."

Alce's face flamed as red as his whiskers and nearly as red as Joanna's
cheeks. For a moment she faced him speechless, her mouth open.

"Oh, that's what they say, is it!" she broke out at last. "They say I'd
marry Dick Socknersh, who looks after my sheep, and who's like a sheep
himself. They think I'd marry a man who's got no more'n two words on his
tongue and half that number of ideas in his head--who can't think
without its giving him a headache--who comes of no class of people--his
father and mother were hedge people up at Anvil Green--who gets eighteen
bob a week as my looker--who--"

"Don't get so vrothered, Joanna. I'm only telling you what folk say, and
if you'll stop and think you'll see they've got some reason. Your
looker's done things that no farmer on this Marsh ud put up with a
month, and yet you keep him on, you with all your fine ideas about
farming and running Ansdore as your poor father ud have had it ... and
then he's a well set-up young man too, nice-looking and stout as I won't
deny, and you're a young woman that I'd say was nice-looking too, and
it's only natural folks should talk when they see a pretty woman hanging
on to a handsome chap in spite of his having half bust her."

"He hasn't half bust me, nor a quarter, neither--and I ain't hanging on
to him, as you're elegant enough to say. I keep him as my looker because
he's valiant with the sheep and manages 'em as if born to it, and
because he minds what I say and doesn't sass me back or meddle, as some
I could name. As for being set on him, I'm not so far below myself as
all that. You must think unaccountable low of me, Arthur Alce, if you
figure I'd get sweet on a man who's courting my chicken-gal, which is
what Dick Socknersh is doing."

"Courting Martha Tilden?"

"Yes, my chicken-gal.