Kent Ditch.

"I can't afford to let the place come to any harm--besides, what does
it matter what people think or say of me? I don't care.... But it'll
be a mortal trouble getting another looker and settling him to my
ways--and I'll never get a man who'll mind me as poor Socknersh does.
I want a man with a humble soul, but seemingly you can't get that
through advertising...."

She had come to the bridge over the Kent Ditch, and Sussex ended in a
swamp of reeds. Looking southward she saw the boundaries of her own
land, the Kent Innings, dotted with sheep, and the shepherd's cottage
among them, its roof standing out a bright orange under the fleece of
lichen that smothered the tiles. It suddenly struck her that a good way
out of her difficulty might be a straight talk with Socknersh. He would
probably be working in his garden now, having those few evening hours as
his own. Straining her eyes into the shining thickness of mist and sun,
she thought she could see his blue shirt moving among the bean-rows and
hollyhocks around the little place.

"I'll go and see him and talk it out--I'll tell him that if he won't
have proper sense he must go. I've been soft, putting up with him all
this time."

Being marsh bred, Joanna did not take what seemed the obvious way to the
cottage, across the low pastures by the Kent Ditch; instead, she went
back a few yards to where a dyke ran under the road. She followed it out
on the marsh, and when it cut into another dyke she followed that,
walking on the bank beside the great teazle. A plank bridge took her
across between two willows, and after some more such movements, like a