"You were my father's looker, but after this you shan't be looker of
mine. Since you won't mind what I say or take orders from me, you can
leave my service this day month."

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.




§8

By the same evening the news was all over Lydd market, by the next it
was all over the Three Marshes. Everyone was repeating to everyone else
how Joanna Godden of Little Ansdore had got shut of her looker after
twenty-eight years' service, and her father not been dead a month.
"Enough to make him rise out of his grave," said the Marsh.

The actual reasons for the turning away were variously given--"Just
because he spuck up and told her as her pore father wudn't hold wud her
goings on," was the doctrine promulgated by the Woolpack; but the
general council sitting in the bar of the Crown decreed that the trouble
had arisen out of Fuller's spirited refusal to sell some lambs that had
tic. Other pronouncements were that she had sassed Fuller because he
knew more about sheep than she did--or that Fuller had sassed her for
the same reason--that it wasn't Joanna who had dismissed him, but he who