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"Three times he's asked her, as I know for certain," said Vennal, the tenant of Beggar's Bush. "No, it's four," said Prickett, Joanna's neighbour at Great Ansdore, "there was that time coming back from the Wild Beast Show." "I was counting that," said Vennal; "that and the one that Mr. Vine's looker heard at Lydd market, and then that time in the house."
There was a horror-stricken silence in the crowd even the lowest journeyman butcher realized the solemnity of the occasion. "You understand me?" said Joanna. "Yes, ma'am," came from Fuller in a crushed voice. By the same evening the news was all over Lydd market, by the next it was all over the Three Marshes.
The peculiarity about the garden is that every handful of soil that lies upon it has been carried on Peggotty's back across the four-mile waste of shingle that separates the sea-coast from Lydd. That is, perhaps, as severe a test as could be applied to a man's predilection for a garden. There are many people who like to have a bit of garden at the back of their house.
All Saints at Lydd belonged to Tintern Abbey, but All Saints at Brookland to St Augustine's at Canterbury, and as its font will tell us it dates from Norman times, for about it the Normans carved the signs of the Zodiac. Brookland, hard to get at, stands on the great road which runs south- westward out of the Marsh and brings you at last out of Kent into Sussex at Rye.
Saunders came from Lydd and had a look at it, but he says it's past repair er satisfactory repair, and it ud really save money in the long run if we bought a new one." Joanna was a little shocked. She had listened to the grunts and wheezes of the harmonium from her childhood, and the idea of a new one disturbed her it suggested sacrilege and ritualism and the moving of landmarks.
Fuller stood beside the wethers, his two shaggy dogs couched at his feet he started when he suddenly saw his mistress burst through the crowd, her black feathers nodding above her angry face. "Fuller!" she shouted, so loud that those who were standing near turned round to see "How many wether-tegs have you brought to Lydd?" "Two score." "How many did I tell you to bring?"
But how many would gratify their taste at the expense of bringing the soil on their own backs, plodding on "backstays" over four miles of loose shingle? One important change has happened in this little household since I last sat by its hearthstone. Ham is married, and is, in some incomprehensible manner, understood to reside both at Lydd with Mrs. Ham and at the cabin with his mother. As for Mrs.
At Donkey Street, the neighbours were beginning to get used to young Honisett and his bride, at Rye and Lydd and Romney the farmers had given up expecting Arthur Alce to come round the corner on his grey horse, with samples of wheat or prices of tegs. At Ansdore, too, the breach was healed. Joanna and Ellen lived quietly together, sharing their common life without explosions.
Just beyond Pedlinge it turned northward and crossed the South Eastern Railway under the hills that used to be the coast of England, long ago when the sea flowed up over the marsh to the walls of Lympne and Rye; then in less than a mile it had crossed the line again, turning south; for some time it ran seawards, parallel with the Kent Ditch, then suddenly went off at right angles and ran straight to the throws where the Woolpack Inn watches the roads to Lydd and Appledore.
They drove as far as the edges of Dunge Marsh, then turned eastward along the shingle road which runs across the root of the Ness to Lydd. The little mare's chocolate flanks were all a-sweat, and Joanna thought it better to bait at Lydd and rest during the heat of the day. "You'd never think it was Whitsun," said Albert, looking out of the inn window at the sunny, empty street.
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