"Surelye, missus."

That night Joanna dreamed that giant sheep as big as bullocks were being
herded on the Marsh by a giant shepherd.




§10

Spring brought a blooming to Ansdore as well as to the Marsh. Joanna had
postponed, after all, her house-painting till the winter months of
rotting sea mists were over. But in April the ladders striped her
house-front, and soon her windows and doors began to start luridly out
of their surroundings of mellowed tiles and brick. After much
deliberation she had chosen yellow for her colour, tastefully picked out
with green. She had always been partial to yellow--it was a colour that
"showed up" well, and she was also influenced by the fact that there was
no other yellow-piped dwelling on the Marsh.

Her neighbours disapproved of her choice for the same reasons that had
induced her to make it. They were shocked by the fact that you could see
her front door from half a mile off on the Brodnyx Road; it was just
like Joanna Godden to choose a colour that shrieked across the landscape
instead of merging itself unobtrusively into it. But there was a still
worse shock in store for public opinion, and that was when she decided
to repaint her waggons as well as her house.

Hitherto there had been only one shape and colour of waggon on the
Marsh--a plain low-sided trough of deep sea-blue. The name was always