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Updated: May 19, 2025
"Not Socknersh, but I ... who is the man, then?" "Well, it äun't no secret from anyone but you, Miss Joanna, so I döan't mind telling you as my boy is Peter Relf, their looker at Old Honeychild.
Joanna watched for a moment without speaking; then suddenly she broke out: "Socknersh, I hear it's said that the new lambs ull be poor in wool." "They're saying it, missus, but it äun't true." "I don't care if it's true or not. You shouldn't ought to tell my gal Martha such things before you tell me." Socknersh's eyes opened wide, and the other men looked up from their work.
You must think unaccountable low of me, Arthur Alce, if you figure I'd get sweet on a man who's courting my chicken-gal, which is what Dick Socknersh is doing." "Courting Martha Tilden?" "Yes, my chicken-gal. And you think I'd look at him! I!... You must think middling low of me, Arthur Alce ... a man who's courting my chicken-gal." "I'd always thought as Martha Tilden but you must know best.
It would be good to hear him say "Surelye, missus" in that admiring, husky voice. He was the only one of her farm-hands who, she felt, had any deference towards her any real loyalty, though he was the last come. "Socknersh, d'you think your master up at Garlinge would let me hire one or two rams to cross with my ewes? I might go up and have a look at them.
Joanna flounced off, and went to find Socknersh at the shearing. In the shelter of some hurdles he and one or two travelling shearers were busy with the ewes' fleeces. She noticed that the animal Socknersh was working on lay quiet between his feet, while the other men held theirs with difficulty and many struggles.
She saw herself opening the ball with Dick Socknersh, her hand in his, his clumsy arm round her waist.... Of course old Stuppeny was technically the head man at Ansdore, but he was too old to dance she would see he had plenty to eat and drink instead she would take the floor with Dick Socknersh, and all eyes would be fixed upon her.
Marvellous plans were forming in her head part, they seemed, of the fiery shapes that the clouds had raised in the west beyond Rye hill. Those clouds walked forth as flocks of sheep huge sheep under mountainous fleeces, the wonder of the Marsh and the glory of Ansdore.... "Socknersh ..." "Yes, missus." She hesitated whether she should share with him her new inspiration.
It pleased Joanna to talk of Socknersh and herself as "we," though she would bitterly have resented any idea of joint responsibility in the days of Fuller. The rites of lambing and shearing had not dimmed her faith in the high priest she had chosen for Ansdore's most sacred mysteries. Socknersh was a man who was automatically "good with sheep."
Socknersh stared at her with eyes and mouth wide open. "A month's notice," she repeated, "it's what I came here to give you. You're the tale of all the parish with your ignorance. I'd meant to talk to you about it and give you another chance, but now I see there'd be no sense in that, and you can go at the end of your month." "You'll give me a character, missus?"
"You'd never believe the lot there is in sheep-keeping, Socknersh; and the wonders you can do if you have knowledge and information. Now the folks around here, they're middling sensible, but they ain't what you'd call clever. They're stuck in their ways, as you might say. Now if you open your mind properly, you can learn a lot of things out of books.
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