Lion and the Unicorn in Brodnyx church, with her looker as her
bridegroom? The mere thought was preposterous to her pride. She, her
father's daughter, to marry his father's son!--the suspicion insulted
her. She loved herself and Ansdore too well for that ... and Socknersh,
fine fellow as he was, had no mind and very little sense--he could
scarcely read and write, he was slow as an ox, and had common ways and
spoke the low Marsh talk--he drank out of his saucer and cut his bread
with his pocket-knife--he spat in the yard. How dared people think she
would marry him?--that she was so undignified, infatuated and
unfastidious as to yoke herself to a slow, common boor? Her indignation
flamed against the scandal-mongers ... that Woolpack! She'd like to see
their licence taken away, and then perhaps decent women's characters
would be safe....

But folk said it was queer she should keep on Socknersh when he had
done her such a lot of harm--they made sure there must be something
behind it. For the first time Joanna caught a glimpse of his
shortcomings as a looker, and in a moment of vision asked herself if it
wasn't really true that he ought to have known about that dip. Was she
blinding herself to his incapacity simply because she liked to have him
about the place--to see his big stooping figure blocked against the
sunset--to see his queer eyes light up with queer thoughts that were
like a dog's thoughts or a sheep's thoughts ... to watch his hands, big
and heavy and brown, with the earth worked into the skin ... and his
neck, when he lifted his head, brown as his hands, and like the trunk of
an oak with roots of firm, beautiful muscle in the field of his broad
chest?

Then Joanna was scared--she knew she ought not to think of her looker
so; and she told herself that she kept him on just because he was the