“Oh, you sorry old dog,” said Wilson, and the table laughed deep-throatedly, or giggled, according to sex.  Old Stuppeny looked pleased.  His dream, for some reason unknown to himself, never failed to raise a laugh, and generally produced a cup of cocoa sooner or later from one of the girls.

Martin did not join in the discussion—­he felt that his presence slightly damped the company, and for him to talk might spoil their chances of forgetting him.  He watched Miss Godden as she ate and laughed and kept the conversation rolling—­he also watched Arthur Alce, trying to use this man’s devotion as a clue to what was left of Joanna’s mystery.  Alce struck him as a dull fellow, and he put down his faithfulness to the fact that having once fallen into love as into a rut he had lain there ever since like a sheep on its back.  He could see that Alce did not altogether approve of his own choice—­her vigour and flame, her quick temper, her free airs—­she was really too big for these people; and yet she was so essentially one of them ... their roots mingled in the same soil, the rich, damp, hardy soil of the Marsh.

His attitude towards her was undergoing its second and final change.  Now he knew that he would never want to flirt with her.  He did not want her tentatively or temporarily.  He still wanted her adventurously, but her adventure was not the adventure of siege and capture but of peaceful holding.  Like the earth, she would give her best not to the man who galloped over her, but to the man who chose her for his home and settlement.  Thus he would hold her, or not at all.  Very likely after to-day he would renounce her—­he had not yet gone too far, his eyes were still undazzled, and he could see the difficulties and limitations in which he was involving himself by such a choice.  He was a gentleman and a townsman—­he trod her country only as a stranger, and he knew that in spite of the love which the Marsh had made him give it in the few months of his dwelling, his thoughts still worked for years ahead, when better health and circumstances would allow him to go back to the town, to a quick and crowded life.  Could he then swear himself to the slow blank life of the Three Marshes, where events move deliberately as a plough?  To the empty landscape, to the flat miles?  He would have to love her enough to endure the empty flatness that framed her.  He could never take her away, any more than he could take away Ansdore or North Farthing.  He must make a renunciation for her sake—­could he do so?  And after all, she was common stuff—­a farmer’s daughter, bred at the National School.  By taking her he would be making just a yokel of himself....  Yet was it worth clinging to his simulacrum of gentility—­boosted up by his father’s title and a few dead rites, such as the late dinner which had impressed her so much.  The only real difference between the Goddens and the Trevors was that the former knew their job and the latter didn’t.