feel the blow, which had shorn it of its fleece of pleasant profits.
Joanna was for the first time confronted by the need for economy, and
she hated economy with all the lavish, colour-loving powers of her
nature. Even now she would not bend herself to retrenchment--not a man
less in the yard, not a girl less in the kitchen, as her neighbours had
expected.

But the failure of the cross-bred lambs did not end the tale of
Ansdore's misadventures. There was a lot of dipping for sheep-scab on
the Marsh that August, and it soon became known that several of Joanna
Godden's sheep and lambs had died after the second dip.

"That's her valiant Socknersh again," said Prickett--"guv 'em a double
arsenic dip. Good sakes! That woman had better be quick and marry him
before he does any more harm as her looker."

"There's more than he gives a double arsenic dip, surelye."

"Surelye--but they mixes the can a bit. Broadhurst says as Socknersh's
second dip was as strong as his first."

The feeling about Socknersh's incapacity reached such a point that more
than one warning was given Joanna for her father's sake, and one at
least for her own, from Arthur Alce.

"I shouldn't say it, Joanna, if it wasn't true, but a man who puts a
sheep into poison-wash twice in a fortnight isn't fit to be anyone's
looker."

"But we were dipping for sheep-scab--that takes something stronger than