"She'll never come back," said Pete that evening—"you täake my word fur it."
"That's another of my daughters gone fur a whore."
"Who wur the fust?"
"Why Tilly—goes off wud that lousy pig-keeper up at Grandturzel. She's no better than Caro."
"And there wur Rose," added Pete, anxious to supply instances.
Reuben swore at him.
He felt Caro's disappearance more acutely than he would allow to show. First, she had left him badly in the lurch in household matters—he had to engage a woman to take her place, and pay her wages. Also she had caused a scandal in the neighbourhood, which meant more derisive fingers pointed at Odiam. Pete was now the only one left of his original family—his children and their runnings-away had become a byword in Peasmarsh.
In the course of time he heard that Caro was living with Joe Dansay down at the Camber, but he made no effort to bring her back. "I'm shut of her," he told everyone angrily. If Caro preferred a common sailor and loose living to the dignity and usefulness of her position at Odiam, he was not going to interfere. Besides, she had disgraced his farm, and he would never forgive that.
It struck him that his relations with women had been singularly unfortunate. Caro, Tilly, Rose, Alice, had all been failures—indeed he had come to look back on Naomi as his only success. Women were all the same, without ambition, without self-respect, ready to lick the boots of the first person who stroked them and was silly enough not to see through their wiles.