“She’ll never get another looker,” became the changed burden of the Marsh.

But here again prophecy failed, for hardly had Joanna’s advertisement appeared simultaneously in the Rye Observer and the Kentish Express than she had half a dozen applications from likely men.  Martha Tilden brought the news to Godfrey’s Stores, the general shop in Brodnyx.

“There she is, setting in her chair, talking to a young chap what’s come from Botolph’s Bridge, and there’s three more waiting in the passage—­she told Grace to give them each a cup of cocoa when she was making it.  And what d’you think?  Their looker’s come over from Old Honeychild, asking for the place, though he was sitting in the Crown at Lydd only yesterday, as Sam Broadhurst told me, saying as it was a shame to get shut of Fuller like that, and as how Joanna deserved never to see another looker again in her life.”

“Which of the lot d’you think she’ll take?” asked Godfrey.

“I dunno.  How should I say?  Peter Relf from Old Honeychild is a stout feller, and one of the other men told me he’d got a character that made him blush, it was that fine and flowery.  But you never know with Joanna Godden—­maybe she’d sooner have a looker as knew nothing, and then she could teach him.  Ha!  Ha!”

Meanwhile Joanna sat very erect in her kitchen chair, interviewing the young chap from Botolph’s Bridge.

“You’ve only got a year’s character from Mr. Gain?”

“Yes, missus ...” a long pause during which some mental process took place clumsily behind this low, sunburnt forehead ... “but I’ve got these.”

He handed Joanna one or two dirty scraps of paper on which were written “characters” from earlier employers.

Joanna read them.  None was for longer than two years, but they all spoke well of the young man before her.

“Then you’ve never been on the Marsh before you came to Botolph’s Bridge?”

“No, missus.”

“Sheep on the Marsh is very different from sheep inland.”

“I know, missus.”

“But you think you’re up to the job.”

“Yes, missus.”

Joanna stared at him critically.  He was a fine young fellow—­slightly bowed already though he had given his age as twenty-five, for the earth begins her work early in a man’s frame, and has power over the green tree as well as the dry.  But this stoop did not conceal his height and strength and breadth, and somehow his bigness, combined with his simplicity, his slow thought and slow tongue, appealed to Joanna, stirred something within her that was almost tender.  She handed him back his dirty “characters.”

“Well, I must think it over.  I’ve some other men to see, but I’ll write you a line to Botolph’s Bridge and tell you how I fix.  You go now and ask Grace Wickens, my gal, to give you a cup of hot cocoa.”

Young Socknersh went, stooping his shock-head still lower as he passed under the worn oak lintel of the kitchen door.  Joanna interviewed the shepherd from Honeychild, a man from Slinches, another from Anvil Green inland, and one from Chilleye, on Pevensey marsh beyond Marlingate.  She settled with none, but told each that she would write.  She spent the evening thinking them over.