painted in white on a small black wooden square attached to the side.
Thomas Godden's waggons had been no departure from this rule. It was
left to his daughter to flout tradition, and by some obscure process of
local reasoning, bring discredit to her dead father by painting her
waggons yellow instead of blue. The evil went deeper than mere colour.
Joanna was a travelled woman, having once been to the Isle of Wight, and
it suddenly struck her that, since she was repainting, she might give
her three waggons the high gondola-shaped fronts that she had admired in
the neighbourhood of Shanklin and Ventnor. These she further beautified
with a rich, scrolled design, and her name in large, ornate
lettering--"Joanna Godden. Little Ansdore. Walland Marsh"--so that her
waggons went forth upon the roads very much as the old men o' war of
King Edward's fleet had sailed over that same country when it was
fathoms deep under the seas of Rye Bay.... With their towering,
decorated poops they were more like mad galleys of a bygone age than
sober waggons of a nineteenth century farm.

Her improvements gave her a sense of adventurous satisfaction--her house
with its yellow window frames and doors, with its new curtains of
swaggering design--her high-pooped waggons--the coat with the brass
buttons that old Stuppeny wore when he drove behind her to market--her
dreams of giant sheep upon her innings--all appealed to something
fundamental in her which was big and boastful. She even liked the gossip
with which she was surrounded, the looks that were turned upon her when
she drove into Rye or Lydd or New Romney--the "there goes Joanna Godden"
of folk she passed. She had no acute sense of their disapproval; if she
became aware of it she would only repeat to herself that she would "show
'em the style"--which she certainly did.