“She’s more like an organist’s monkey,” said her husband.  “What ud I do if I ever saw you tricked out like that, Mrs. Prickett?”

“Oh, I’d never wear such clothes, master, as you know well.  But then I’m a different looking sort of woman.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say them bright colours don’t suit Joanna Godden.”

“I never thought much of her looks.”

“Nor of her looker—­he! he!” joined in Furnese with a glance in Joanna’s direction.

She was talking to Dick Socknersh, who had been to church with the other hands that could be spared from the farm.  She asked him if he had liked the sermon, and then told him to get off home quickly and give the tegs their swill.

“Reckon he don’t know a teg from a tup,” said Furnese.

“Oh, surelye, Mr. Furnese, he aeun’t a bad looker.  Jim Harmer said he wur just about wonderful with the ewes at the shearing.”

“Maybe—­but he’d three sway-backed lambs at Rye market on Thursday.”

“Sway-backs!”

“Three.  ’Twas a shame.”

“But Joanna told me he was such a fine, wonderful man with the sheep—­as he got ’em to market about half as tired and twice as quick as Fuller used to in his day.”

“Ah, but then she’s unaccountable set on young Socknersh.  He lets her do what she likes with her sheep, and he’s a stout figure of a man, too.  Joanna Godden always was partial to stout-looking men.”

“But she’d never be such a fool as to git sweet on her looker.”

“Well, that’s wot they’re saying at the Woolpack.”

“The Woolpack!  Did you ever hear of such a talk-hole as you men get into when you’re away from us!  They say some unaccountable fine things at the Woolpack.  I tell you, Joanna ain’t such a fool as to get sweet on Dick Socknersh.”

“She’s been fool enough to cross Spanish sheep with her own.  Three rams she had sent all the way from furrin parts by Northampton.  I tell you, after that, she’d be fool enough for anything.”

“Maybe she’ll do well by it.”

“Maybe she’ll do well by marrying Dick Socknersh.  I tell you, you doean’t know naeun about it, missus.  Whosumdever heard of such an outlandish, heathen, foolish notion?”

On the whole Joanna was delighted with the success of her appearance.  She walked home with Mrs. Southland and Maggie Furnese, bridling a little under their glances, while she discussed servants, and food-prices, and a new way of pickling eggs.

She parted from them at Ansdore, and she and Ellen went in to their Sunday’s dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.  After this the day would proceed according to the well-laid ceremonial that Joanna loved.  Little Ellen, with a pinafore tied over her Sabbath splendours, would go into the kitchen to sit with the maids—­get into their laps, turn over their picture Bibles, examine their one or two trinkets and strings of beads which they always brought into the kitchen on Sunday.  Meanwhile Joanna would sit in state in the parlour, her feet on a footstool, on her lap a volume of Spurgeon’s sermons.  In the old days it had always been her father who read sermons, but now he was dead she had taken over this part of his duties with the rest, and if the afternoon generally ended in sleep, sleep was a necessary part of a well-kept Sabbath day.