Joanna Godden by Sheila Kaye-Smith
page 58 of 444 (13%)
page 58 of 444 (13%)
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furrin heathen notion of Spanish sheep. Anyone could have told her as
the lambs ud be too big and the ewes could never drop them safe--she might have known it herself, surelye." "It's her looker that should ought to have known better," said Furnese. "Joanna Godden's a woman, fur all her man's ways, and you can't expéct her to have präaper know wud sheep." "I wonder if she'll get shut of him after this," said Vine. "Not she! She don't see through him yet." "She'll never see through him," said Prickett solemnly. "The only kind of man a woman ever sees through is the kind she don't like to look at." Joanna certainly did not "see through" Dick Socknersh. She knew that she was chiefly to blame for the tragedy of her lambing, and when her reason told her that her looker should have discouraged instead of obeyed and abetted her, she rather angrily tossed the thought aside. Socknersh had the sense to realize that she knew more about sheep than he, and he had not understood that in this matter she was walking out of her knowledge into experiment. No one could have known that the scheme would turn out so badly--the Spanish rams had not been so big after all, only a little bigger than her ewes ... if anyone should have foreseen trouble it was the Northampton farmer who knew the size of Spanish lambs at birth, and from his Kentish experience must also have some knowledge of Romney Marsh sheep. But though she succeeded in getting all the guilt off her looker and some of it off herself, she was nevertheless stricken by the greatness |
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