As a young boy he had shared his brother’s veneration of the Madonna, and though, when he grew up, his natural romanticism had not led him his brother’s way, the boyish ideal had remained, and unconsciously all his later attitude towards women was tinged with it.  Joanna was certainly not the Madonna type, and all Martin’s soul revolted from her broad, bustling ways—­everywhere he went he heard stories of her busyness and her bluff, of “what she had said to old Southland,” or “the sass she had given Vine.”  She seemed to him to be an arrant, pushing baggage, running after notoriety and display.  Her rudeness to Mr. Pratt was only part of the general parcel.  He looked upon her as sexless, too, and he hated women to be sexless—­his Madonna was not after Memling but after Raphael.  Though he heard constant gossip about her farming activities and her dealings at market, he heard none about her passions, the likelier subject.  All he knew was that she had been expected for years to marry Arthur Alce, but had not done so, and that she had also been expected at one time to marry her looker, but had not done so.  The root of such romances must be poor indeed if this was all the flower that gossip could give them.

Altogether he was prejudiced against Joanna Godden, and the prejudice did not go deep enough to beget interest.  He was not interested in her, and did not expect her to be interested in him; therefore it was with great surprise, not to say consternation, that one morning at New Romney Market he saw her bearing down upon him with the light of battle in her eye.

“Good morning, Mr. Trevor.”

“Good morning, Miss Godden.”

“Fine weather.”

“Fine weather.”

He would have passed on, but she barred the way, rather an imposing figure in her bottle-green driving coat, with a fur toque pressed down over the flying chestnut of her hair.  Her cheeks were not so much coloured as stained deep with the sun and wind of Walland Marsh, and though it was November, a mass of little freckles smudged and scattered over her skin.  It had not occurred to him before that she was even a good-looking creature.

“I’m thinking, Mr. Trevor,” she said deliberately, “that you and me aren’t liking each other as much as we should ought.”

“Really, Miss Godden.  I don’t see why you need say that.”

“Well, we don’t like each other, do we?  Leastways, you don’t like me.  Now”—­lifting a large, well-shaped hand—­“you needn’t gainsay me, for I know what you think.  You think I was middling rude to Mr. Pratt in Pedlinge street that day I first met you—­and so I think myself, and I’m sorry, and Mr. Pratt knows it.  He came around two weeks back to ask about Milly Pump, my chicken-gal, getting confirmed, and I told him I liked him and his ways so much that he could confirm the lot, gals and men—­even old Stuppeny who says he’s been done already, but I say it don’t matter, since he’s so old that it’s sure to have worn off by this time.”