"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."