Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas HardyA Rural Painting of the Dutch School (page 2)

the sharpness that her position as village sharpener demanded, to the contrast between the rattle of knives and forks and the late notes of the fiddlers.

“Ay; and I don’t know but what ’tis sweeter in tone when you get above forty,” said the tranter; “except, in faith, as regards father there. Never such a mortal man as he for tunes. They do move his soul; don’t ’em, father?”

The eldest Dewy smiled across from his distant chair an assent to Reuben’s remark.

“Spaking of being moved in soul,” said Mr. Penny, “I shall never forget the first time I heard the “Dead March.” ‘Twas at poor Corp’l Nineman’s funeral at Casterbridge. It fairly made my hair creep and fidget about like a vlock of sheep–ah, it did, souls! And when they had done, and the last trump had sounded, and the guns was fired over the dead hero’s grave, a’ icy-cold drop o’ moist sweat hung upon my forehead, and another upon my jawbone. Ah, ’tis a very solemn thing!”

“Well, as to father in the corner there,” the tranter said, pointing to old William, who was in the act of filling his mouth; “he’d starve to death for music’s sake now, as much as when he was a boy- chap of fifteen.”

“Truly, now,” said Michael Mail, clearing the corner of his throat in the manner of a man who meant to be convincing; ‘there’s a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.” He lifted the cup to his mouth, and drank himself gradually backwards from a perpendicular position to a slanting one, during which time his looks performed a circuit from the wall opposite him to the ceiling overhead. Then clearing the other corner of his throat: ‘Once I was a-setting in the little kitchen of the Dree Mariners at Casterbridge, having a bit of dinner, and a brass band struck up in the street. Such a beautiful band as that were! I was setting eating fried liver and lights, I well can mind–ah, I was! and to save my life, I couldn’t help chawing to the tune. Band played six- eight time; six-eight chaws I, willynilly. Band plays common; common time went my teeth among the liver and lights as true as a hair. Beautiful ’twere! Ah, I shall never forget that there band!”

“That’s as tuneful a thing as ever I heard of,” said grandfather James, with the absent gaze which accompanies profound criticism.

“I don’t like Michael’s tuneful stories then,” said Mrs. Dewy. “They are quite coarse to a person o’ decent taste.”

Old Michael’s mouth twitched here and there, as if he wanted to smile but didn’t know where to begin, which gradually settled to an expression that it was not displeasing for a nice woman like the tranter’s wife to correct him.

“Well, now,” said Reuben, with decisive earnestness, “that sort o’ coarse touch that’s so upsetting to Ann’s feelings is to my mind a recommendation; for it do always prove a story to be true. And for the same reason, I like a story with a bad moral. My sonnies, all true stories have a coarse touch or a bad moral, depend upon’t. If the story-tellers could ha’ got decency and good morals from true stories, who’d ha’ troubled to invent parables?” Saying this the tranter arose to fetch a new stock of cider, ale, mead, and home- made wines.

Mrs. Dewy sighed, and appended a remark (ostensibly behind her husband’s back, though that the words should reach his ears distinctly was understood by both): “Such a man as Dewy is! Nobody do know the trouble I have to keep that man barely respectable. And did you ever hear too–just now at supper-time–talking about “taties” with Michael in such a work-folk way. Well, ’tis what I was never brought up to! With our family ’twas never less than “taters,” and very often “pertatoes” outright; mother was so particular and nice with us girls there was no family in the parish that kept them selves up more than we.”

The hour of parting came. Fancy could not remain for the night, because she had engaged a woman to wait up for her. She disappeared temporarily from the flagging party of dancers, and then came downstairs wrapped up and looking altogether a different person from whom she had been hitherto, in fact (to Dick’s sadness and disappointment), a woman somewhat reserved and of a phlegmatic temperament–nothing left in her of the romping girl that she had seemed but a short quarter-hour before, who had not minded the weight of Dick’s hand upon her waist, nor shirked the purlieus of the mistletoe.

“What a difference!” thought the young man–hoary cynic pro tem. “What a miserable deceiving difference between the manners of a maid’s life at dancing times and at others! Look at this lovely Fancy! Through the whole past evening touchable, squeezeable–even kissable! For whole half-hours I held her so chose to me that not a sheet of paper could have been shipped between us; and I could feel her heart only just outside my own, her life beating on so close to mine, that I was aware of every breath in it. A flit is made upstairs–a hat and a cloak put on–and I no more dare to touch her than–” Thought failed him, and he returned to realities.

But this was an endurable misery in comparison with what followed. Mr. Shiner and his watch-chain, taking the intrusive advantage that ardent bachelors who are going homeward along the same road as a pretty young woman always do take of that circumstance, came forward to assure Fancy–with a total disregard of Dick’s emotions, and in tones which were certainly not frigid–that he (Shiner) was not the man to go to bed before seeing his Lady Fair safe within her own door–not he, nobody should say he was that;–and that he would not leave her side an inch till the thing was done–drown him if he would. The proposal was assented to by Miss Day, in Dick’s foreboding judgment, with one degree–or at any rate, an appreciable fraction of a degree–of warmth beyond that required by a disinterested desire for protection from the dangers of the night.

All was over; and Dick surveyed the chair she had last occupied, looking now like a setting from which the gem has been torn. There stood her glass, and the romantic teaspoonful of elder wine at the bottom that she couldn’t drink by trying ever so hard, in obedience to the mighty arguments of the tranter (his hand coming down upon her shoulder the while, like a Nasmyth hammer); but the drinker was there no longer. There were the nine or ten pretty little crumbs she had left on her plate; but the eater was no more seen.

There seemed a disagreeable closeness of relationship between himself and the members of his family, now that they were left alone again face to face. His father seemed quite offensive for appearing to be in just as high spirits as when the guests were there; and as for grandfather James (who had not yet left), he was quite fiendish in being rather glad they were gone.

“Really,” said the tranter, in a tone of placid satisfaction, “I’ve had so little time to attend to myself all the evenen, that I mean to enjoy a quiet meal now! A slice of this here ham–neither too fat nor too lean–so; and then a drop of this vinegar and pickles– there, that’s it–and I shall be as fresh as a lark again! And to tell the truth, my sonny, my inside has been as dry as a lime-basket all night.”

“I like a party very well once in a while,” said Mrs. Dewy, leaving off the adorned tones she had been bound to use throughout the evening, and returning to the natural marriage voice; “but, Lord, ’tis such a sight of heavy work next day! What with the dirty plates, and knives and forks, and dust and smother, and bits kicked off your furniture, and I don’t know what all, why a body could a’most wish there were no such things as Christmases . . . Ah-h dear!” she yawned, till the clock in the corner had ticked several beats. She cast her eyes round upon the displaced, dust-laden furniture, and sank down overpowered at the sight.

“Well, I be getting all right by degrees, thank the Lord for’t!” said the tranter cheerfully through a mangled mass of ham and bread, without lifting his eyes from his plate, and chopping away with his knife and fork as if he were felling trees. “Ann, you may as well go on to bed at once, and not bide there making such sleepy faces; you look as long-favoured as a fiddle, upon my life, Ann. There, you must be wearied out, ’tis true. I’ll do the doors and draw up the clock; and you go on, or you’ll be as white as a sheet to- morrow.”

“Ay; I don’t know whether I shan’t or no.” The matron passed her hand across her eyes to brush away the film of sleep till she got upstairs.

Dick wondered how it was that when people were married they could be so blind to romance; and was quite certain that if he ever took to wife that dear impossible Fancy, he and she would never be so dreadfully practical and undemonstrative of the Passion as his father and mother were. The most extraordinary thing was, that all the fathers and mothers he knew were just as undemonstrative as his own.

CHAPTER IX: DICK CALLS AT THE SCHOOL

The early days of the year drew on, and Fancy, having spent the holiday weeks at home, returned again to Mellstock.

Every spare minute of the week following her return was used by Dick in accidentally passing the schoolhouse in his journeys about the neighbourhood; but not once did she make herself visible. A handkerchief belonging to her had been providentially found by his mother in clearing the rooms the day after that of the dance; and by much contrivance Dick got it handed over to him, to leave with her at any time he should be near the school after her return. But he delayed taking the extreme measure of calling with it lest, had she really no sentiment of interest in him, it might be regarded as a slightly absurd errand, the reason guessed; and the sense of the ludicrous, which was rather keen in her, do his dignity considerable injury in her eyes; and what she thought of him, even apart from the question of her loving, was all the world to him now.

But the hour came when the patience of love at twenty-one could endure no longer. One Saturday he approached the school with a mild air of indifference, and had the satisfaction of seeing the object of his quest at the further end of her garden, trying, by the aid of a spade and gloves, to root a bramble that had intruded itself there.

He disguised his feelings from some suspicious-looking cottage- windows opposite by endeavouring to appear like a man in a great hurry of business, who wished to leave the handkerchief and have done with such trifling errands.

This endeavour signally failed; for on approaching the gate he found it locked to keep the children, who were playing ‘cross-dadder’ in the front, from running into her private grounds.

She did not see him; and he could only think of one thing to be done, which was to shout her name.

“Miss Day!”

The words were uttered with a jerk and a look meant to imply to the cottages opposite that he was now simply one who liked shouting as a pleasant way of passing his time, without any reference to persons in gardens. The name died away, and the unconscious Miss Day continued digging and pulling as before.

He screwed himself up to enduring the cottage-windows yet more stoically, and shouted again. Fancy took no notice whatever.

He shouted the third time, with desperate vehemence, turning suddenly about and retiring a little distance, as if it were by no means for his own pleasure that he had come.

This time she heard him, came down the garden, and entered the school at the back. Footsteps echoed across the interior, the door opened, and three-quarters of the blooming young schoolmistress’s face and figure stood revealed before him; a slice on her left-hand side being cut off by the edge of the door. Having surveyed and recognized him, she came to the gate.

At sight of him had the pink of her cheeks increased, lessened, or did it continue to cover its normal area of ground? It was a question meditated several hundreds of times by her visitor in after-hours–the meditation, after wearying involutions, always ending in one way, that it was impossible to say.

“Your handkerchief: Miss Day: I called with.” He held it out spasmodically and awkwardly. “Mother found it: under a chair.”

“O, thank you very much for bringing it, Mr. Dewy. I couldn’t think where I had dropped it.”

Now Dick, not being an experienced lover–indeed, never before having been engaged in the practice of love-making at all, except in a small schoolboy way–could not take advantage of the situation; and out came the blunder, which afterwards cost him so many bitter moments and a sleepless night:-

“Good morning, Miss Day.”

“Good morning, Mr. Dewy.”

The gate was closed; she was gone; and Dick was standing outside, unchanged in his condition from what he had been before he called. Of course the Angel was not to blame–a young woman living alone in a house could not ask him indoors unless she had known him better– he should have kept her outside before floundering into that fatal farewell. He wished that before he called he had realized more fully than he did the pleasure of being about to call; and turned away.

PART THE SECOND–SPRING

CHAPTER I: PASSING BY THE SCHOOL

It followed that, as the spring advanced, Dick walked abroad much more frequently than had hitherto been usual with him, and was continually finding that his nearest way to or from home lay by the road which skirted the garden of the school. The first-fruits of his perseverance were that, on turning the angle on the nineteenth journey by that track, he saw Miss Fancy’s figure, clothed in a dark-gray dress, looking from a high open window upon the crown of his hat. The friendly greeting resulting from this rencounter was considered so valuable an elixir that Dick passed still oftener; and by the time he had almost trodden a little path under the fence where never a path was before, he was rewarded with an actual meeting face to face on the open road before her gate. This brought another meeting, and another, Fancy faintly showing by her bearing that it was a pleasure to her of some kind to see him there but the sort of pleasure she derived, whether exultation at the hope her exceeding fairness inspired, or the true feeling which was alone Dick’s concern, he could not anyhow decide, although he meditated on her every little movement for hours after it was made.

CHAPTER II: A MEETING OF THE QUIRE

It was the evening of a fine spring day. The descending sun appeared as a nebulous blaze of amber light, its outline being lost in cloudy masses hanging round it, like wild locks of hair.

The chief members of Mellstock parish choir were standing in a group in front of Mr. Penny’s workshop in the lower village. They were all brightly illuminated, and each was backed up by a shadow as long as a steeple the lowness of the source of light rendering the brims of their hats of no use at all as a protection to the eyes.

Mr. Penny’s was the last house in that part of the parish, and stood in a hollow by the roadside so that cart-wheels and horses’ legs were about level with the sill of his shop-window. This was low and wide, and was open from morning till evening, Mr. Penny himself being invariably seen working inside, like a framed portrait of a shoemaker by some modern Moroni. He sat facing the road, with a boot on his knees and the awl in his hand, only looking up for a moment as he stretched out his arms and bent forward at the pull, when his spectacles flashed in the passer’s face with a shine of flat whiteness, and then returned again to the boot as usual. Rows of lasts, small and large, stout and slender, covered the wall which formed the background, in the extreme shadow of which a kind of dummy was seen sitting, in the shape of an apprentice with a string tied round his hair (probably to keep it out of his eyes). He smiled at remarks that floated in from without, but was never known to answer them in Mr. Penny’s presence. Outside the window the upper-leather of a Wellington-boot was usually hung, pegged to a board as if to dry. No sign was over his door; in fact–as with old banks and mercantile houses–advertising in any shape was scorned, and it would have been felt as beneath his dignity to paint up, for the benefit of strangers, the name of an establishment whose trade came solely by connection based on personal respect.

His visitors now came and stood on the outside of his window, sometimes leaning against the sill, sometimes moving a pace or two backwards and forwards in front of it. They talked with deliberate gesticulations to Mr. Penny, enthroned in the shadow of the interior.

“I do like a man to stick to men who be in the same line o’ life–o’ Sundays, anyway–that I do so.”

“‘Tis like all the doings of folk who don’t know what a day’s work is, that’s what I say.”

“My belief is the man’s not to blame; ’tis SHE–she’s the bitter weed!”

“No, not altogether. He’s a poor gawk-hammer. Look at his sermon yesterday.”

“His sermon was well enough, a very good guessable sermon, only he couldn’t put it into words and speak it. That’s all was the matter wi’ the sermon. He hadn’t been able to get it past his pen.”

“Well–ay, the sermon might have been good; for, ’tis true, the sermon of Old Eccl’iastes himself lay in Eccl’iastes’s ink-bottle afore he got it out.”

Mr. Penny, being in the act of drawing the last stitch tight, could afford time to look up and throw in a word at this point.

“He’s no spouter–that must be said, ‘a b’lieve.”

“‘Tis a terrible muddle sometimes with the man, as far as spout do go,” said Spinks.

“Well, we’ll say nothing about that,” the tranter answered; “for I don’t believe ’twill make a penneth o’ difference to we poor martels here or hereafter whether his sermons be good or bad, my sonnies.”

Mr. Penny made another hole with his awl, pushed in the thread, and looked up and spoke again at the extension of arms.

“‘Tis his goings-on, souls, that’s what it is.” He clenched his features for an Herculean addition to the ordinary pull, and continued, “The first thing he done when he came here was to be hot and strong about church business.”

“True,” said Spinks; “that was the very first thing he done.”

Mr. Penny, having now been offered the ear of the assembly, accepted it, ceased stitching, swallowed an unimportant quantity of air as if it were a pill, and continued:

“The next thing he do do is to think about altering the church, until he found ‘twould be a matter o’ cost and what not, and then not to think no more about it.”

“True: that was the next thing he done.”

“And the next thing was to tell the young chaps that they were not on no account to put their hats in the christening font during service.”

“True.”

“And then ’twas this, and then ’twas that, and now ’tis–“

Words were not forcible enough to conclude the sentence, and Mr. Penny gave a huge pull to signify the concluding word.

“Now ’tis to turn us out of the quire neck and crop,” said the tranter after an interval of half a minute, not by way of explaining the pause and pull, which had been quite understood, but as a means of keeping the subject well before the meeting.

Mrs. Penny came to the door at this point in the discussion. Like all good wives, however much she was inclined to play the Tory to her husband’s Whiggism, and vice versa, in times of peace, she coalesced with him heartily enough in time of war.

“It must be owned he’s not all there,” she replied in a general way to the fragments of talk she had heard from indoors. “Far below poor Mr. Grinham” (the late vicar).

“Ay, there was this to be said for he, that you were quite sure he’d never come mumbudgeting to see ye, just as you were in the middle of your work, and put you out with his fuss and trouble about ye.”

“Never. But as for this new Mr. Maybold, though he mid be a very well-intending party in that respect, he’s unbearable; for as to sifting your cinders, scrubbing your floors, or emptying your slops, why, you can’t do it. I assure you I’ve not been able to empt them for several days, unless I throw ’em up the chimley or out of winder; for as sure as the sun you meet him at the door, coming to ask how you are, and ’tis such a confusing thing to meet a gentleman at the door when ye are in the mess o’ washing.”

“‘Tis only for want of knowing better, poor gentleman,” said the tranter. “His meaning’s good enough. Ay, your pa’son comes by fate: ’tis heads or tails, like pitch-halfpenny, and no choosing; so we must take en as he is, my sonnies, and thank God he’s no worse, I suppose.”

“I fancy I’ve seen him look across at Miss Day in a warmer way than Christianity asked for,” said Mrs. Penny musingly; “but I don’t quite like to say it.”

“O no; there’s nothing in that,” said grandfather William.

“If there’s nothing, we shall see nothing,” Mrs. Penny replied, in the tone of a woman who might possibly have private opinions still.

“Ah, Mr. Grinham was the man!” said Bowman. “Why, he never troubled us wi’ a visit from year’s end to year’s end. You might go anywhere, do anything: you’d be sure never to see him.”

“Yes, he was a right sensible pa’son,” said Michael. “He never entered our door but once in his life, and that was to tell my poor wife–ay, poor soul, dead and gone now, as we all shall I–that as she was such a’ old aged person, and lived so far from the church, he didn’t at all expect her to come any more to the service.”

“And ‘a was a very jinerous gentleman about choosing the psalms and hymns o’ Sundays. ‘Confound ye,’ says he, ‘blare and scrape what ye will, but don’t bother me!'”

“And he was a very honourable man in not wanting any of us to come and hear him if we were all on-end for a jaunt or spree, or to bring the babies to be christened if they were inclined to squalling. There’s good in a man’s not putting a parish to unnecessary trouble.”

“And there’s this here man never letting us have a bit o’ peace; but keeping on about being good and upright till ’tis carried to such a pitch as I never see the like afore nor since!”

“No sooner had he got here than he found the font wouldn’t hold water, as it hadn’t for years off and on; and when I told him that Mr. Grinham never minded it, but used to spet upon his vinger and christen ’em just as well, ‘a said, ‘Good Heavens! Send for a workman immediate. What place have I come to!’ Which was no compliment to us, come to that.”

“Still, for my part,” said old William, “though he’s arrayed against us, I like the hearty borussnorus ways of the new pa’son.”

“You, ready to die for the quire,” said Bowman reproachfully, “to stick up for the quire’s enemy, William!”

“Nobody will feel the loss of our church-work so much as I,” said the old man firmly; “that you d’all know. I’ve a-been in the quire man and boy ever since I was a chiel of eleven. But for all that ’tisn’t in me to call the man a bad man, because I truly and sincerely believe en to be a good young feller.”

Some of the youthful sparkle that used to reside there animated William’s eye as he uttered the words, and a certain nobility of aspect was also imparted to him by the setting sun, which gave him a Titanic shadow at least thirty feet in length, stretching away to the east in outlines of imposing magnitude, his head finally terminating upon the trunk of a grand old oak-tree.

“Mayble’s a hearty feller enough,” the tranter replied, “and will spak to you be you dirty or be you clane. The first time I met en was in a drong, and though ‘a didn’t know me no more than the dead, ‘a passed the time of day. ‘D’ye do?’ he said, says he, nodding his head. ‘A fine day.’ Then the second time I met en was full-buff in town street, when my breeches were tore into a long strent by getting through a copse of thorns and brimbles for a short cut home- along; and not wanting to disgrace the man by spaking in that state, I fixed my eye on the weathercock to let en pass me as a stranger. But no: ‘How d’ye do, Reuben?’ says he, right hearty, and shook my hand. If I’d been dressed in silver spangles from top to toe, the man couldn’t have been civiller.”

At this moment Dick was seen coming up the village-street, and they turned and watched him.

CHAPTER III: A TURN IN THE DISCUSSION

“I’m afraid Dick’s a lost man,” said the tranter.

“What?–no!” said Mail, implying by his manner that it was a far commoner thing for his ears to report what was not said than that his judgment should be at fault.

“Ay,” said the tranter, still gazing at Dick’s unconscious advance. “I don’t at all like what I see! There’s too many o’ them looks out of the winder without noticing anything; too much shining of boots; too much peeping round corners; too much looking at the clock; telling about clever things SHE did till you be sick of it; and then upon a hint to that effect a horrible silence about her. I’ve walked the path once in my life and know the country, neighbours; and Dick’s a lost man!” The tranter turned a quarter round and smiled a smile of miserable satire at the setting new moon, which happened to catch his eye.

The others became far too serious at this announcement to allow them to speak; and they still regarded Dick in the distance.

“‘Twas his mother’s fault,” the tranter continued, “in asking the young woman to our party last Christmas. When I eyed the blue frock and light heels o’ the maid, I had my thoughts directly. ‘God bless thee, Dicky my sonny,’ I said to myself; ‘there’s a delusion for thee!'”

“They seemed to be rather distant in manner last Sunday, I thought?” Mail tentatively observed, as became one who was not a member of the family.

“Ay, that’s a part of the zickness. Distance belongs to it, slyness belongs to it, queerest things on earth belongs to it! There, ‘tmay as well come early as late s’far as I know. The sooner begun, the sooner over; for come it will.”

“The question I ask is,” said Mr. Spinks, connecting into one thread the two subjects of discourse, as became a man learned in rhetoric, and beating with his hand in a way which signified that the manner rather than the matter of his speech was to be observed, “how did Mr. Maybold know she could play the organ? You know we had it from her own lips, as far as lips go, that she has never, first or last, breathed such a thing to him; much less that she ever would play.”

In the midst of this puzzle Dick joined the party, and the news which had caused such a convulsion among the ancient musicians was unfolded to him. “Well,” he said, blushing at the allusion to Miss Day, “I know by some words of hers that she has a particular wish not to play, because she is a friend of ours; and how the alteration comes, I don’t know.”

“Now, this is my plan,” said the tranter, reviving the spirit of the discussion by the infusion of new ideas, as was his custom–“this is my plan; if you don’t like it, no harm’s done. We all know one another very well, don’t we, neighbours?”

That they knew one another very well was received as a statement which, though familiar, should not be omitted in introductory speeches.

“Then I say this”–and the tranter in his emphasis slapped down his hand on Mr. Spinks’s shoulder with a momentum of several pounds, upon which Mr. Spinks tried to look not in the least startled–“I say that we all move down-along straight as a line to Pa’son Mayble’s when the clock has gone six to-morrow night. There we one and all stand in the passage, then one or two of us go in and spak to en, man and man; and say, ‘Pa’son Mayble, every tradesman d’like to have his own way in his workshop, and Mellstock Church is yours. Instead of turning us out neck and crop, let us stay on till Christmas, and we’ll gie way to the young woman, Mr. Mayble, and make no more ado about it. And we shall always be quite willing to touch our hats when we meet ye, Mr. Mayble, just as before.’ That sounds very well? Hey?”

“Proper well, in faith, Reuben Dewy.”

“And we won’t sit down in his house; ‘twould be looking too familiar when only just reconciled?”

“No need at all to sit down. Just do our duty man and man, turn round, and march out–he’ll think all the more of us for it.”

“I hardly think Leaf had better go wi’ us?” said Michael, turning to Leaf and taking his measure from top to bottom by the eye. “He’s so terrible silly that he might ruin the concern.”

“He don’t want to go much; do ye, Thomas Leaf?” said William.

“Hee-hee! no; I don’t want to. Only a teeny bit!”

“I be mortal afeard, Leaf; that you’ll never be able to tell how many cuts d’take to sharpen a spar,” said Mail.

“I never had no head, never! that’s how it happened to happen, hee- hee!”

They all assented to this, not with any sense of humiliating Leaf by disparaging him after an open confession, but because it was an accepted thing that Leaf didn’t in the least mind having no head, that deficiency of his being an unimpassioned matter of parish history.

“But I can sing my treble!” continued Thomas Leaf; quite delighted at being called a fool in such a friendly way; “I can sing my treble as well as any maid, or married woman either, and better! And if Jim had lived, I should have had a clever brother! To-morrow is poor Jim’s birthday. He’d ha’ been twenty-six if he’d lived till to-morrow.”

“You always seem very sorry for Jim,” said old William musingly.

“Ah! I do. Such a stay to mother as he’d always ha’ been! She’d never have had to work in her old age if he had continued strong, poor Jim!”

“What was his age when ‘a died?”

“Four hours and twenty minutes, poor Jim. ‘A was born as might be at night; and ‘a didn’t last as might be till the morning. No, ‘a didn’t last. Mother called en Jim on the day that would ha’ been his christening day if he had lived; and she’s always thinking about en. You see he died so very young.”

“Well, ’twas rather youthful,” said Michael.

“Now to my mind that woman is very romantical on the matter o’ children?” said the tranter, his eye sweeping his audience.

“Ah, well she mid be,” said Leaf. “She had twelve regular one after another, and they all, except myself; died very young; either before they was born or just afterwards.”

“Pore feller, too. I suppose th’st want to come wi’ us?” the tranter murmured.

“Well, Leaf; you shall come wi’ us as yours is such a melancholy family,” said old William rather sadly.

“I never see such a melancholy family as that afore in my life,” said Reuben. “There’s Leaf’s mother, poor woman! Every morning I see her eyes mooning out through the panes of glass like a pot-sick winder-flower; and as Leaf sings a very high treble, and we don’t know what we should do without en for upper G, we’ll let en come as a trate, poor feller.”

“Ay, we’ll let en come, ‘a b’lieve,” said Mr. Penny, looking up, as the pull happened to be at that moment.

“Now,” continued the tranter, dispersing by a new tone of voice these digressions about Leaf; “as to going to see the pa’son, one of us might call and ask en his meaning, and ‘twould be just as well done; but it will add a bit of flourish to the cause if the quire waits on him as a body. Then the great thing to mind is, not for any of our fellers to be nervous; so before starting we’ll one and all come to my house and have a rasher of bacon; then every man-jack het a pint of cider into his inside; then we’ll warm up an extra drop wi’ some mead and a bit of ginger; every one take a thimbleful- -just a glimmer of a drop, mind ye, no more, to finish off his inner man–and march off to Pa’son Mayble. Why, sonnies, a man’s not himself till he is fortified wi’ a bit and a drop? We shall be able to look any gentleman in the face then without shrink or shame.”

Mail recovered from a deep meditation and downward glance into the earth in time to give a cordial approval to this line of action, and the meeting adjourned.

CHAPTER IV: INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR

At six o’clock the next day, the whole body of men in the choir emerged from the tranter’s door, and advanced with a firm step down the lane. This dignity of march gradually became obliterated as they went on, and by the time they reached the hill behind the vicarage a faint resemblance to a flock of sheep might have been discerned in the venerable party. A word from the tranter, however, set them right again; and as they descended the hill, the regular tramp, tramp, tramp of the united feet was clearly audible from the vicarage garden. At the opening of the gate there was another short interval of irregular shuffling, caused by a rather peculiar habit the gate had, when swung open quickly, of striking against the bank and slamming back into the opener’s face.

“Now keep step again, will ye?” said the tranter. “It looks better, and more becomes the high class of arrant which has brought us here.” Thus they advanced to the door.

At Reuben’s ring the more modest of the group turned aside, adjusted their hats, and looked critically at any shrub that happened to lie in the line of vision; endeavouring thus to give a person who chanced to look out of the windows the impression that their request, whatever it was going to be, was rather a casual thought occurring whilst they were inspecting the vicar’s shrubbery and grass-plot than a predetermined thing. The tranter, who, coming frequently to the vicarage with luggage, coals, firewood, etc., had none of the awe for its precincts that filled the breasts of most of the others, fixed his eyes firmly on the knocker during this interval of waiting. The knocker having no characteristic worthy of notice, he relinquished it for a knot in one of the door-panels, and studied the winding lines of the grain.

“O, sir, please, here’s Tranter Dewy, and old William Dewy, and young Richard Dewy, O, and all the quire too, sir, except the boys, a-come to see you!” said Mr. Maybold’s maid-servant to Mr. Maybold, the pupils of her eyes dilating like circles in a pond.

“All the choir?” said the astonished vicar (who may be shortly described as a good-looking young man with courageous eyes, timid mouth, and neutral nose), abandoning his writing and looking at his parlour-maid after speaking, like a man who fancied he had seen her face before but couldn’t recollect where.

“And they looks very firm, and Tranter Dewy do turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, but stares quite straight and solemn with his mind made up!”

“O, all the choir,” repeated the vicar to himself; trying by that simple device to trot out his thoughts on what the choir could come for.

“Yes; every man-jack of ’em, as I be alive!” (The parlour-maid was rather local in manner, having in fact been raised in the same village.) “Really, sir, ’tis thoughted by many in town and country that–“

“Town and country!–Heavens, I had no idea that I was public property in this way!” said the vicar, his face acquiring a hue somewhere between that of the rose and the peony. “Well, ‘It is thought in town and country that–‘”

“It is thought that you be going to get it hot and strong–excusen my incivility, sir.”

The vicar suddenly recalled to his recollection that he had long ago settled it to be decidedly a mistake to encourage his servant Jane in giving personal opinions. The servant Jane saw by the vicar’s face that he recalled this fact to his mind; and removing her forehead from the edge of the door, and rubbing away the indent that edge had made, vanished into the passage as Mr. Maybold remarked, “Show them in, Jane.”

A few minutes later a shuffling and jostling (reduced to as refined a form as was compatible with the nature of shuffles and jostles) was heard in the passage; then an earnest and prolonged wiping of shoes, conveying the notion that volumes of mud had to be removed; but the roads being so clean that not a particle of dirt appeared on the choir’s boots (those of all the elder members being newly oiled, and Dick’s brightly polished), this wiping might have been set down simply as a desire to show that respectable men had no wish to take a mean advantage of clean roads for curtailing proper ceremonies. Next there came a powerful whisper from the same quarter:-

“Now stand stock-still there, my sonnies, one and all! And don’t make no noise; and keep your backs close to the wall, that company may pass in and out easy if they want to without squeezing through ye: and we two are enough to go in.” . . . The voice was the tranter’s.

“I wish I could go in too and see the sight!” said a reedy voice– that of Leaf.

“‘Tis a pity Leaf is so terrible silly, or else he might,” said another.

“I never in my life seed a quire go into a study to have it out about the playing and singing,” pleaded Leaf; “and I should like to see it just once!”

“Very well; we’ll let en come in,” said the tranter. “You’ll be like chips in porridge, {1} Leaf–neither good nor hurt. All right, my sonny, come along;” and immediately himself, old William, and Leaf appeared in the room.

“We took the liberty to come and see ‘ee, sir,” said Reuben, letting his hat hang in his left hand, and touching with his right the brim of an imaginary one on his head. “We’ve come to see ‘ee, sir, man and man, and no offence, I hope?”

“None at all,” said Mr. Maybold.

“This old aged man standing by my side is father; William Dewy by name, sir.”

“Yes; I see it is,” said the vicar, nodding aside to old William, who smiled.

“I thought you mightn’t know en without his bass-viol,” the tranter apologized. “You see, he always wears his best clothes and his bass-viol a-Sundays, and it do make such a difference in a’ old man’s look.”

“And who’s that young man?” the vicar said.

“Tell the pa’son yer name,” said the tranter, turning to Leaf; who stood with his elbows nailed back to a bookcase.

“Please, Thomas Leaf, your holiness!” said Leaf; trembling.

“I hope you’ll excuse his looks being so very thin,” continued the tranter deprecatingly, turning to the vicar again. “But ’tisn’t his fault, poor feller. He’s rather silly by nature, and could never get fat; though he’s a’ excellent treble, and so we keep him on.”

“I never had no head, sir,” said Leaf; eagerly grasping at this opportunity for being forgiven his existence.

“Ah, poor young man!” said Mr. Maybold.

“Bless you, he don’t mind it a bit, if you don’t, sir,” said the tranter assuringly. “Do ye, Leaf?”

“Not I–not a morsel–hee, hee! I was afeard it mightn’t please your holiness, sir, that’s all.”

The tranter, finding Leaf get on so very well through his negative qualities, was tempted in a fit of generosity to advance him still higher, by giving him credit for positive ones. “He’s very clever for a silly chap, good-now, sir. You never knowed a young feller keep his smock-frocks so clane; very honest too. His ghastly looks is all there is against en, poor feller; but we can’t help our looks, you know, sir.”

“True: we cannot. You live with your mother, I think, Leaf?”

The tranter looked at Leaf to express that the most friendly assistant to his tongue could do no more for him now, and that he must be left to his own resources.

“Yes, sir: a widder, sir. Ah, if brother Jim had lived she’d have had a clever son to keep her without work!”

“Indeed! poor woman. Give her this half-crown. I’ll call and see your mother.”

“Say, ‘Thank you, sir,'” the tranter whispered imperatively towards Leaf.

“Thank you, sir!” said Leaf.

“That’s it, then; sit down, Leaf;” said Mr. Maybold.

“Y-yes, sir!”

The tranter cleared his throat after this accidental parenthesis about Leaf; rectified his bodily position, and began his speech.

“Mr. Mayble,” he said, “I hope you’ll excuse my common way, but I always like to look things in the face.”

Reuben made a point of fixing this sentence in the vicar’s mind by gazing hard at him at the conclusion of it, and then out of the window.

Mr. Maybold and old William looked in the same direction, apparently under the impression that the things’ faces alluded to were there visible.

“What I have been thinking”–the tranter implied by this use of the past tense that he was hardly so discourteous as to be positively thinking it then–“is that the quire ought to be gie’d a little time, and not done away wi’ till Christmas, as a fair thing between man and man. And, Mr. Mayble, I hope you’ll excuse my common way?”

“I will, I will. Till Christmas,” the vicar murmured, stretching the two words to a great length, as if the distance to Christmas might be measured in that way. “Well, I want you all to understand that I have no personal fault to find, and that I don’t wish to change the church music by forcible means, or in a way which should hurt the feelings of any parishioners. Why I have at last spoken definitely on the subject is that a player has been brought under–I may say pressed upon–my notice several times by one of the churchwardens. And as the organ I brought with me is here waiting” (pointing to a cabinet-organ standing in the study), “there is no reason for longer delay.”

“We made a mistake I suppose then, sir? But we understood the young woman didn’t want to play particularly?” The tranter arranged his countenance to signify that he did not want to be inquisitive in the least.

“No, nor did she. Nor did I definitely wish her to just yet; for your playing is very good. But, as I said, one of the churchwardens has been so anxious for a change, that, as matters stand, I couldn’t consistently refuse my consent.”

Now for some reason or other, the vicar at this point seemed to have an idea that he had prevaricated; and as an honest vicar, it was a thing he determined not to do. He corrected himself; blushing as he did so, though why he should blush was not known to Reuben.

“Understand me rightly,” he said: “the church-warden proposed it to me, but I had thought myself of getting–Miss Day to play.”

“Which churchwarden might that be who proposed her, sir?–excusing my common way.” The tranter intimated by his tone that, so far from being inquisitive, he did not even wish to ask a single question.

“Mr. Shiner, I believe.”

“Clk, my sonny!–beg your pardon, sir, that’s only a form of words of mine, and slipped out accidental–he nourishes enmity against us for some reason or another; perhaps because we played rather hard upon en Christmas night. Anyhow ’tis certain sure that Mr. Shiner’s real love for music of a particular kind isn’t his reason. He’ve no more ear than that chair. But let that be.”

“I don’t think you should conclude that, because Mr. Shiner wants a different music, he has any ill-feeling for you. I myself; I must own, prefer organ-music to any other. I consider it most proper, and feel justified in endeavouring to introduce it; but then, although other music is better, I don’t say yours is not good.”

“Well then, Mr. Mayble, since death’s to be, we’ll die like men any day you name (excusing my common way).”

Mr. Maybold bowed his head.

“All we thought was, that for us old ancient singers to be choked off quiet at no time in particular, as now, in the Sundays after Easter, would seem rather mean in the eyes of other parishes, sir. But if we fell glorious with a bit of a flourish at Christmas, we should have a respectable end, and not dwindle away at some nameless paltry second-Sunday-after or Sunday-next-before something, that’s got no name of his own.”

“Yes, yes, that’s reasonable; I own it’s reasonable.”

“You see, Mr. Mayble, we’ve got–do I keep you inconvenient long, sir?”

“No, no.”

“We’ve got our feelings–father there especially.”

The tranter, in his earnestness, had advanced his person to within six inches of the vicar’s.

“Certainly, certainly!” said Mr. Maybold, retreating a little for convenience of seeing. “You are all enthusiastic on the subject, and I am all the more gratified to find you so. A Laodicean lukewarmness is worse than wrongheadedness itself.”

“Exactly, sir. In fact now, Mr. Mayble,” Reuben continued, more impressively, and advancing a little closer still to the vicar, “father there is a perfect figure o’ wonder, in the way of being fond of music!”

The vicar drew back a little further, the tranter suddenly also standing back a foot or two, to throw open the view of his father, and pointing to him at the same time.

Old William moved uneasily in the large chair, and with a minute smile on the mere edge of his lips, for good-manners, said he was indeed very fond of tunes.

“Now, you see exactly how it is,” Reuben continued, appealing to Mr. Maybold’s sense of justice by looking sideways into his eyes. The vicar seemed to see how it was so well that the gratified tranter walked up to him again with even vehement eagerness, so that his waistcoat-buttons almost rubbed against the vicar’s as he continued: “As to father, if you or I, or any man or woman of the present generation, at the time music is a-playing, was to shake your fist in father’s face, as may be this way, and say, “Don’t you be delighted with that music!–the tranter went back to where Leaf was sitting, and held his fist so close to Leaf’s face that the latter pressed his head back against the wall: “All right, Leaf; my sonny, I won’t hurt you; ’tis just to show my meaning to Mr. Mayble.–As I was saying, if you or I, or any man, was to shake your fist in father’s face this way, and say, “William, your life or your music!” he’d say, “My life!” Now that’s father’s nature all over; and you see, sir, it must hurt the feelings of a man of that kind for him and his bass-viol to be done away wi’ neck and crop.”

The tranter went back to the vicar’s front and again looked earnestly at his face.

“True, true, Dewy,” Mr. Maybold answered, trying to withdraw his head and shoulders without moving his feet; but finding this impracticable, edging back another inch. These frequent retreats had at last jammed Mr. Maybold between his easy-chair and the edge of the table.

And at the moment of the announcement of the choir, Mr. Maybold had just re-dipped the pen he was using; at their entry, instead of wiping it, he had laid it on the table with the nib overhanging. At the last retreat his coat-tails came in contact with the pen, and down it rolled, first against the back of the chair, thence turning a summersault into the seat, thence falling to the floor with a rattle.

The vicar stooped for his pen, and the tranter, wishing to show that, however great their ecclesiastical differences, his mind was not so small as to let this affect his social feelings, stooped also.

“And have you anything else you want to explain to me, Dewy?” said Mr. Maybold from under the table.

“Nothing, sir. And, Mr. Mayble, you be not offended? I hope you see our desire is reason?” said the tranter from under the chair.

“Quite, quite; and I shouldn’t think of refusing to listen to such a reasonable request,” the vicar replied. Seeing that Reuben had secured the pen, he resumed his vertical position, and added, “You know, Dewy, it is often said how difficult a matter it is to act up to our convictions and please all parties. It may be said with equal truth, that it is difficult for a man of any appreciativeness to have convictions at all. Now in my case, I see right in you, and right in Shiner. I see that violins are good, and that an organ is good; and when we introduce the organ, it will not be that fiddles were bad, but that an organ was better. That you’ll clearly understand, Dewy?”

“I will; and thank you very much for such feelings, sir. Piph-h-h- h! How the blood do get into my head, to be sure, whenever I quat down like that!” said Reuben, who having also risen to his feet stuck the pen vertically in the inkstand and almost through the bottom, that it might not roll down again under any circumstances whatever.

Now the ancient body of minstrels in the passage felt their curiosity surging higher and higher as the minutes passed. Dick, not having much affection for this errand, soon grew tired, and went away in the direction of the school. Yet their sense of propriety would probably have restrained them from any attempt to discover what was going on in the study had not the vicar’s pen fallen to the floor. The conviction that the movement of chairs, etc., necessitated by the search, could only have been caused by the catastrophe of a bloody fight beginning, overpowered all other considerations; and they advanced to the door, which had only just fallen to. Thus, when Mr. Maybold raised his eyes after the stooping he beheld glaring through the door Mr. Penny in full-length portraiture, Mail’s face and shoulders above Mr. Penny’s head, Spinks’s forehead and eyes over Mail’s crown, and a fractional part of Bowman’s countenance under Spinks’s arm–crescent shaped portions of other heads and faces being visible behind these–the whole dozen and odd eyes bristling with eager inquiry.

Mr. Penny, as is the case with excitable boot-makers and men, seeing the vicar look at him and hearing no word spoken, thought it incumbent upon himself to say something of any kind. Nothing suggested itself till he had looked for about half a minute at the vicar.

“You’ll excuse my naming of it, sir,” he said, regarding with much commiseration the mere surface of the vicar’s face; “but perhaps you don’t know that your chin have bust out a-bleeding where you cut yourself a-shaving this morning, sir.”

“Now, that was the stooping, depend upon’t,” the tranter suggested, also looking with much interest at the vicar’s chin. “Blood always will bust out again if you hang down the member that’s been bleeding.”

Old William raised his eyes and watched the vicar’s bleeding chin likewise; and Leaf advanced two or three paces from the bookcase, absorbed in the contemplation of the same phenomenon, with parted lips and delighted eyes.

“Dear me, dear me!” said Mr. Maybold hastily, looking very red, and brushing his chin with his hand, then taking out his handkerchief and wiping the place.

“That’s it, sir; all right again now, ‘a b’lieve–a mere nothing,” said Mr. Penny. “A little bit of fur off your hat will stop it in a minute if it should bust out again.”

“I’ll let ‘ee have a bit off mine,” said Reuben, to show his good feeling; “my hat isn’t so new as yours, sir, and ‘twon’t hurt mine a bit.”

“No, no; thank you, thank you,” Mr. Maybold again nervously replied.

“‘Twas rather a deep cut seemingly?” said Reuben, feeling these to be the kindest and best remarks he could make.

“O, no; not particularly.”

“Well, sir, your hand will shake sometimes a-shaving, and just when it comes into your head that you may cut yourself; there’s the blood.”

“I have been revolving in my mind that question of the time at which we make the change,” said Mr. Maybold, “and I know you’ll meet me half-way. I think Christmas-day as much too late for me as the present time is too early for you. I suggest Michaelmas or thereabout as a convenient time for both parties; for I think your objection to a Sunday which has no name is not one of any real weight.”

“Very good, sir. I suppose mortal men mustn’t expect their own way entirely; and I express in all our names that we’ll make shift and be satisfied with what you say.” The tranter touched the brim of his imaginary hat again, and all the choir did the same. “About Michaelmas, then, as far as you are concerned, sir, and then we make room for the next generation.”

“About Michaelmas,” said the vicar.

CHAPTER V: RETURNING HOME WARD

“‘A took it very well, then?” said Mail, as they all walked up the hill.

“He behaved like a man, ‘a did so,” said the tranter. “And I’m glad we’ve let en know our minds. And though, beyond that, we ha’n’t got much by going, ’twas worth while. He won’t forget it. Yes, he took it very well. Supposing this tree here was Pa’son Mayble, and I standing here, and thik gr’t stone is father sitting in the easy- chair. ‘Dewy,’ says he, ‘I don’t wish to change the church music in a forcible way.'”

“That was very nice o’ the man, even though words be wind.”

“Proper nice–out and out nice. The fact is,” said Reuben confidentially, “’tis how you take a man. Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed: kings must be managed; for men want managing almost as much as women, and that’s saying a good deal.”

“‘Tis truly!” murmured the husbands.

“Pa’son Mayble and I were as good friends all through it as if we’d been sworn brothers. Ay, the man’s well enough; ’tis what’s put in his head that spoils him, and that’s why we’ve got to go.”

“There’s really no believing half you hear about people nowadays.”

“Bless ye, my sonnies! ’tisn’t the pa’son’s move at all. That gentleman over there” (the tranter nodded in the direction of Shiner’s farm) “is at the root of the mischty.”

“What! Shiner?”

“Ay; and I see what the pa’son don’t see. Why, Shiner is for putting forward that young woman that only last night I was saying was our Dick’s sweet-heart, but I suppose can’t be, and making much of her in the sight of the congregation, and thinking he’ll win her by showing her off. Well, perhaps ‘a woll.”

“Then the music is second to the woman, the other churchwarden is second to Shiner, the pa’son is second to the churchwardens, and God A’mighty is nowhere at all.”

“That’s true; and you see,” continued Reuben, “at the very beginning it put me in a stud as to how to quarrel wi’ en. In short, to save my soul, I couldn’t quarrel wi’ such a civil man without belying my conscience. Says he to father there, in a voice as quiet as a lamb’s, “William, you are a’ old aged man, as all shall be, so sit down in my easy-chair, and rest yourself.” And down father zot. I could fain ha’ laughed at thee, father; for thou’st take it so unconcerned at first, and then looked so frightened when the chair- bottom sunk in.”

“You see,” said old William, hastening to explain, “I was scared to find the bottom gie way–what should I know o’ spring bottoms?–and thought I had broke it down: and of course as to breaking down a man’s chair, I didn’t wish any such thing.”

“And, neighbours, when a feller, ever so much up for a miff, d’see his own father sitting in his enemy’s easy-chair, and a poor chap like Leaf made the best of; as if he almost had brains–why, it knocks all the wind out of his sail at once: it did out of mine.”

“If that young figure of fun–Fance Day, I mean,” said Bowman, “hadn’t been so mighty forward wi’ showing herself off to Shiner and Dick and the rest, ’tis my belief we should never ha’ left the gallery.”

“‘Tis my belief that though Shiner fired the bullets, the parson made ’em,” said Mr. Penny. “My wife sticks to it that he’s in love wi’ her.”

“That’s a thing we shall never know. I can’t onriddle her, nohow.”

“Thou’st ought to be able to onriddle such a little chiel as she,” the tranter observed.

“The littler the maid, the bigger the riddle, to my mind. And coming of such a stock, too, she may well be a twister.”

“Yes; Geoffrey Day is a clever man if ever there was one. Never says anything: not he.”

“Never.”

“You might live wi’ that man, my sonnies, a hundred years, and never know there was anything in him.”

“Ay; one o’ these up-country London ink-bottle chaps would call Geoffrey a fool.”

“Ye never find out what’s in that man: never,” said Spinks. “Close? ah, he is close! He can hold his tongue well. That man’s dumbness is wonderful to listen to.”

“There’s so much sense in it. Every moment of it is brimmen over wi’ sound understanding.”

“‘A can hold his tongue very clever–very clever truly,” echoed Leaf. “A do look at me as if ‘a could see my thoughts running round like the works of a clock.”

“Well, all will agree that the man can halt well in his talk, be it a long time or be it a short time. And though we can’t expect his daughter to inherit his closeness, she may have a few dribblets from his sense.”

“And his pocket, perhaps.”

“Yes; the nine hundred pound that everybody says he’s worth; but I call it four hundred and fifty; for I never believe more than half I hear.”

“Well, he’ve made a pound or two, and I suppose the maid will have it, since there’s nobody else. But ’tis rather sharp upon her, if she’s been born to fortune, to bring her up as if not born for it, and letting her work so hard.”

“‘Tis all upon his principle. A long–headed feller!”

“Ah,” murmured Spinks, “‘twould be sharper upon her if she were born for fortune, and not to it! I suffer from that affliction.”

CHAPTER VI: YALBURY WOOD AND THE KEEPER’S HOUSE

A mood of blitheness rarely experienced even by young men was Dick’s on the following Monday morning. It was the week after the Easter holidays, and he was journeying along with Smart the mare and the light spring-cart, watching the damp slopes of the hill-sides as they streamed in the warmth of the sun, which at this unsettled season shone on the grass with the freshness of an occasional inspector rather than as an accustomed proprietor. His errand was to fetch Fancy, and some additional household goods, from her father’s house in the neighbouring parish to her dwelling at Mellstock. The distant view was darkly shaded with clouds; but the nearer parts of the landscape were whitely illumined by the visible rays of the sun streaming down across the heavy gray shade behind.

The tranter had not yet told his son of the state of Shiner’s heart that had been suggested to him by Shiner’s movements. He preferred to let such delicate affairs right themselves; experience having taught him that the uncertain phenomenon of love, as it existed in other people, was not a groundwork upon which a single action of his own life could be founded.

Geoffrey Day lived in the depths of Yalbury Wood, which formed portion of one of the outlying estates of the Earl of Wessex, to whom Day was head game-keeper, timber-steward, and general overlooker for this district. The wood was intersected by the highway from Casterbridge to London at a place not far from the house, and some trees had of late years been felled between its windows and the ascent of Yalbury Hill, to give the solitary cottager a glimpse of the passers-by.

It was a satisfaction to walk into the keeper’s house, even as a stranger, on a fine spring morning like the present. A curl of wood-smoke came from the chimney, and drooped over the roof like a blue feather in a lady’s hat; and the sun shone obliquely upon the patch of grass in front, which reflected its brightness through the open doorway and up the staircase opposite, lighting up each riser with a shiny green radiance, and leaving the top of each step in shade.

The window-sill of the front room was between four and five feet from the floor, dropping inwardly to a broad low bench, over which, as well as over the whole surface of the wall beneath, there always hung a deep shade, which was considered objectionable on every ground save one, namely, that the perpetual sprinkling of seeds and water by the caged canary above was not noticed as an eyesore by visitors. The window was set with thickly-leaded diamond glazing, formed, especially in the lower panes, of knotty glass of various shades of green. Nothing was better known to Fancy than the extravagant manner in which these circular knots or eyes distorted everything seen through them from the outside–lifting hats from heads, shoulders from bodies; scattering the spokes of cart-wheels, and bending the straight fir-trunks into semicircles. The ceiling was carried by a beam traversing its midst, from the side of which projected a large nail, used solely and constantly as a peg for Geoffrey’s hat; the nail was arched by a rainbow–shaped stain, imprinted by the brim of the said hat when it was hung there dripping wet.

The most striking point about the room was the furniture. This was a repetition upon inanimate objects of the old principle introduced by Noah, consisting for the most part of two articles of every sort. The duplicate system of furnishing owed its existence to the forethought of Fancy’s mother, exercised from the date of Fancy’s birthday onwards. The arrangement spoke for itself: nobody who knew the tone of the household could look at the goods without being aware that the second set was a provision for Fancy, when she should marry and have a house of her own. The most noticeable instance was a pair of green-faced eight-day clocks, ticking alternately, which were severally two and half minutes and three minutes striking the hour of twelve, one proclaiming, in Italian flourishes, Thomas Wood as the name of its maker, and the other–arched at the top, and altogether of more cynical appearance–that of Ezekiel Saunders. They were two departed clockmakers of Casterbridge, whose desperate rivalry throughout their lives was nowhere more emphatically perpetuated than here at Geoffrey’s. These chief specimens of the marriage provision were supported on the right by a couple of kitchen dressers, each fitted complete with their cups, dishes, and plates, in their turn followed by two dumb-waiters, two family Bibles, two warming-pans, and two intermixed sets of chairs.

But the position last reached–the chimney-corner–was, after all, the most attractive side of the parallelogram. It was large enough to admit, in addition to Geoffrey himself; Geoffrey’s wife, her chair, and her work-table, entirely within the line of the mantel, without danger or even inconvenience from the heat of the fire; and was spacious enough overhead to allow of the insertion of wood poles for the hanging of bacon, which were cloaked with long shreds of soot, floating on the draught like the tattered banners on the walls of ancient aisles.

These points were common to most chimney corners of the neighbourhood; but one feature there was which made Geoffrey’s fireside not only an object of interest to casual aristocratic visitors–to whom every cottage fireside was more or less a curiosity–but the admiration of friends who were accustomed to fireplaces of the ordinary hamlet model. This peculiarity was a little window in the chimney-back, almost over the fire, around which the smoke crept caressingly when it left the perpendicular course. The window-board was curiously stamped with black circles, burnt thereon by the heated bottoms of drinking-cups, which had rested there after previously standing on the hot ashes of the hearth for the purpose of warming their contents, the result giving to the ledge the look of an envelope which has passed through innumerable post-offices.

Fancy was gliding about the room preparing dinner, her head inclining now to the right, now to the left, and singing the tips and ends of tunes that sprang up in her mind like mushrooms. The footsteps of Mrs. Day could be heard in the room overhead. Fancy went finally to the door.

“Father! Dinner.”

A tall spare figure was seen advancing by the window with periodical steps, and the keeper entered from the garden. He appeared to be a man who was always looking down, as if trying to recollect something he said yesterday. The surface of his face was fissured rather than wrinkled, and over and under his eyes were folds which seemed as a kind of exterior eyelids. His nose had been thrown backwards by a blow in a poaching fray, so that when the sun was low and shining in his face, people could see far into his head. There was in him a quiet grimness, which would in his moments of displeasure have become surliness, had it not been tempered by honesty of soul, and which was often wrongheadedness because not allied with subtlety.

Although not an extraordinarily taciturn man among friends slightly richer than himself, he never wasted words upon outsiders, and to his trapper Enoch his ideas were seldom conveyed by any other means than nods and shakes of the head. Their long acquaintance with each other’s ways, and the nature of their labours, rendered words between them almost superfluous as vehicles of thought, whilst the coincidence of their horizons, and the astonishing equality of their social views, by startling the keeper from time to time as very damaging to the theory of master and man, strictly forbade any indulgence in words as courtesies.

Behind the keeper came Enoch (who had been assisting in the garden) at the well-considered chronological distance of three minutes–an interval of non-appearance on the trapper’s part not arrived at without some reflection. Four minutes had been found to express indifference to indoor arrangements, and simultaneousness had implied too great an anxiety about meals.

“A little earlier than usual, Fancy,” the keeper said, as he sat down and looked at the clocks. “That Ezekiel Saunders o’ thine is tearing on afore Thomas Wood again.”

“I kept in the middle between them,” said Fancy, also looking at the two clocks.

“Better stick to Thomas,” said her father. “There’s a healthy beat in Thomas that would lead a man to swear by en offhand. He is as true as the town time. How is it your stap-mother isn’t here?”

As Fancy was about to reply, the rattle of wheels was heard, and “Weh-hey, Smart!” in Mr. Richard Dewy’s voice rolled into the cottage from round the corner of the house.

“Hullo! there’s Dewy’s cart come for thee, Fancy–Dick driving– afore time, too. Well, ask the lad to have pot-luck with us.”

Dick on entering made a point of implying by his general bearing that he took an interest in Fancy simply as in one of the same race and country as himself; and they all sat down. Dick could have wished her manner had not been so entirely free from all apparent consciousness of those accidental meetings of theirs: but he let the thought pass. Enoch sat diagonally at a table afar off; under the corner cupboard, and drank his cider from a long perpendicular pint cup, having tall fir-trees done in brown on its sides, He threw occasional remarks into the general tide of conversation, and with this advantage to himself; that he participated in the pleasures of a talk (slight as it was) at meal-times, without saddling himself with the responsibility of sustaining it.

“Why don’t your stap-mother come down, Fancy?” said Geoffrey. “You’ll excuse her, Mister Dick, she’s a little queer sometimes.”

“O yes,–quite,” said Richard, as if he were in the habit of excusing people every day.

“She d’belong to that class of womankind that become second wives: a rum class rather.”

“Indeed,” said Dick, with sympathy for an indefinite something.

“Yes; and ’tis trying to a female, especially if you’ve been a first wife, as she hey.”

“Very trying it must be.”

“Yes: you see her first husband was a young man, who let her go too far; in fact, she used to kick up Bob’s-a-dying at the least thing in the world. And when I’d married her and found it out, I thought, thinks I, “‘Tis too late now to begin to cure ‘e;” and so I let her bide. But she’s queer,–very queer, at times!”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yes: there; wives be such a provoking class o’ society, because though they be never right, they be never more than half wrong.”

Fancy seemed uneasy under the infliction of this household moralizing, which might tend to damage the airy-fairy nature that Dick, as maiden shrewdness told her, had accredited her with. Her dead silence impressed Geoffrey with the notion that something in his words did not agree with her educated ideas, and he changed the conversation.

“Did Fred Shiner send the cask o’ drink, Fancy?”

“I think he did: O yes, he did.”

“Nice solid feller, Fred Shiner!” said Geoffrey to Dick as he helped himself to gravy, bringing the spoon round to his plate by way of the potato-dish, to obviate a stain on the cloth in the event of a spill.

Now Geoffrey’s eyes had been fixed upon his plate for the previous four or five minutes, and in removing them he had only carried them to the spoon, which, from its fulness and the distance of its transit, necessitated a steady watching through the whole of the route. Just as intently as the keeper’s eyes had been fixed on the spoon, Fancy’s had been fixed on her father’s, without premeditation or the slightest phase of furtiveness; but there they were fastened. This was the reason why:

Dick was sitting next to her on the right side, and on the side of the table opposite to her father. Fancy had laid her right hand lightly down upon the table-cloth for an instant, and to her alarm Dick, after dropping his fork and brushing his forehead as a reason, flung down his own left hand, overlapping a third of Fancy’s with it, and keeping it there. So the innocent Fancy, instead of pulling her hand from the trap, settled her eyes on her father’s, to guard against his discovery of this perilous game of Dick’s. Dick finished his mouthful; Fancy finished, her crumb, and nothing was done beyond watching Geoffrey’s eyes. Then the hands slid apart; Fancy’s going over six inches of cloth, Dick’s over one. Geoffrey’s eye had risen.

“I said Fred Shiner is a nice solid feller,” he repeated, more emphatically.

“He is; yes, he is,” stammered Dick; “but to me he is little more than a stranger.”

“O, sure. Now I know en as well as any man can be known. And you know en very well too, don’t ye, Fancy?”

Geoffrey put on a tone expressing that these words signified at present about one hundred times the amount of meaning they conveyed literally.

Dick looked anxious.

“Will you pass me some bread?” said Fancy in a flurry, the red of her face becoming slightly disordered, and looking as solicitous as a human being could look about a piece of bread.

“Ay, that I will,” replied the unconscious Geoffrey. “Ay,” he continued, returning to the displaced idea, “we are likely to remain friendly wi’ Mr. Shiner if the wheels d’run smooth.”

“An excellent thing–a very capital thing, as I should say,” the youth answered with exceeding relevance, considering that his thoughts, instead of following Geoffrey’s remark, were nestling at a distance of about two feet on his left the whole time.

“A young woman’s face will turn the north wind, Master Richard: my heart if ‘twon’t.” Dick looked more anxious and was attentive in earnest at these words. “Yes; turn the north wind,” added Geoffrey after an impressive pause. “And though she’s one of my own flesh and blood . . . “

“Will you fetch down a bit of raw-mil’ cheese from pantry-shelf?” Fancy interrupted, as if she were famishing.

“Ay, that I will, chiel; chiel, says I, and Mr. Shiner only asking last Saturday night . . . cheese you said, Fancy?”

Dick controlled his emotion at these mysterious allusions to Mr. Shiner,–the better enabled to do so by perceiving that Fancy’s heart went not with her father’s–and spoke like a stranger to the affairs of the neighbourhood. “Yes, there’s a great deal to be said upon the power of maiden faces in settling your courses,” he ventured, as the keeper retreated for the cheese.

“The conversation is taking a very strange turn: nothing that _I_ have ever done warrants such things being said!” murmured Fancy with emphasis, just loud enough to reach Dick’s ears.

“You think to yourself; ’twas to be,” cried Enoch from his distant corner, by way of filling up the vacancy caused by Geoffrey’s momentary absence. “And so you marry her, Master Dewy, and there’s an end o’t.”

“Pray don’t say such things, Enoch,” came from Fancy severely, upon which Enoch relapsed into servitude.

“If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single, we do,” replied Dick.

Geoffrey had by this time sat down again, and he now made his lips thin by severely straining them across his gums, and looked out of the window along the vista to the distant highway up Yalbury Hill. “That’s not the case with some folk,” he said at length, as if he read the words on a board at the further end of the vista.

Fancy looked interested, and Dick said, “No?”

“There’s that wife o’ mine. It was her doom to be nobody’s wife at all in the wide universe. But she made up her mind that she would, and did it twice over. Doom? Doom is nothing beside a elderly woman–quite a chiel in her hands!”

A movement was now heard along the upstairs passage, and footsteps descending. The door at the foot of the stairs opened, and the second Mrs. Day appeared in view, looking fixedly at the table as she advanced towards it, with apparent obliviousness of the presence of any other human being than herself. In short, if the table had been the personages, and the persons the table, her glance would have been the most natural imaginable.

She showed herself to possess an ordinary woman’s face, iron-grey hair, hardly any hips, and a great deal of cleanliness in a broad white apron-string, as it appeared upon the waist of her dark stuff dress.

“People will run away with a story now, I suppose,” she began saying, “that Jane Day’s tablecloths are as poor and ragged as any union beggar’s!”

Dick now perceived that the tablecloth was a little the worse for wear, and reflecting for a moment, concluded that ‘people’ in step- mother language probably meant himself. On lifting his eyes he found that Mrs. Day had vanished again upstairs, and presently returned with an armful of new damask-linen tablecloths, folded square and hard as boards by long compression. These she flounced down into a chair; then took one, shook it out from its folds, and spread it on the table by instalments, transferring the plates and dishes one by one from the old to the new cloth.

“And I suppose they’ll say, too, that she ha’n’t a decent knife and fork in her house!”

“I shouldn’t say any such ill-natured thing, I am sure–” began Dick. But Mrs. Day had vanished into the next room. Fancy appeared distressed.

“Very strange woman, isn’t she?” said Geoffrey, quietly going on with his dinner. “But ’tis too late to attempt curing. My heart! ’tis so growed into her that ‘twould kill her to take it out. Ay, she’s very queer: you’d be amazed to see what valuable goods we’ve got stowed away upstairs.”

Back again came Mrs. Day with a box of bright steel horn-handled knives, silver-plated forks, carver, and all complete. These were wiped of the preservative oil which coated them, and then a knife and fork were laid down to each individual with a bang, the carving knife and fork thrust into the meat dish, and the old ones they had hitherto used tossed away.

Geoffrey placidly cut a slice with the new knife and fork, and asked Dick if he wanted any more.

The table had been spread for the mixed midday meal of dinner and tea, which was common among frugal countryfolk. “The parishioners about here,” continued Mrs. Day, not looking at any living being, but snatching up the brown delf tea-things, “are the laziest, gossipest, poachest, jailest set of any ever I came among. And they’ll talk about my teapot and tea-things next, I suppose!” She vanished with the teapot, cups, and saucers, and reappeared with a tea-service in white china, and a packet wrapped in brown paper. This was removed, together with folds of tissue-paper underneath; and a brilliant silver teapot appeared.

“I’ll help to put the things right,” said Fancy soothingly, and rising from her seat. “I ought to have laid out better things, I suppose. But” (here she enlarged her looks so as to include Dick) “I have been away from home a good deal, and I make shocking blunders in my housekeeping.” Smiles and suavity were then dispensed all around by this bright little bird.

After a little more preparation and modification, Mrs. Day took her seat at the head of the table, and during the latter or tea division of the meal, presided with much composure. It may cause some surprise to learn that, now her vagary was over, she showed herself to be an excellent person with much common sense, and even a religious seriousness of tone on matters pertaining to her afflictions.

CHAPTER VII: DICK MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL

The effect of Geoffrey’s incidental allusions to Mr. Shiner was to restrain a considerable flow of spontaneous chat that would otherwise have burst from young Dewy along the drive homeward. And a certain remark he had hazarded to her, in rather too blunt and eager a manner, kept the young lady herself even more silent than Dick. On both sides there was an unwillingness to talk on any but the most trivial subjects, and their sentences rarely took a larger form than could be expressed in two or three words.

Owing to Fancy being later in the day than she had promised, the charwoman had given up expecting her; whereupon Dick could do no less than stay and see her comfortably tided over the disagreeable time of entering and establishing herself in an empty house after an absence of a week. The additional furniture and utensils that had been brought (a canary and cage among the rest) were taken out of the vehicle, and the horse was unharnessed and put in the plot opposite, where there was some tender grass. Dick lighted the fire already laid; and activity began to loosen their tongues a little.

“There!” said Fancy, “we forgot to bring the fire-irons!”

She had originally found in her sitting-room, to bear out the expression ‘nearly furnished’ which the school-manager had used in his letter to her, a table, three chairs, a fender, and a piece of carpet. This ‘nearly’ had been supplemented hitherto by a kind friend, who had lent her fire-irons and crockery until she should fetch some from home.

Dick attended to the young lady’s fire, using his whip-handle for a poker till it was spoilt, and then flourishing a hurdle stick for the remainder of the time.

“The kettle boils; now you shall have a cup of tea,” said Fancy, diving into the hamper she had brought.

“Thank you,” said Dick, whose drive had made him ready for some, especially in her company.

“Well, here’s only one cup-and-saucer, as I breathe! Whatever could mother be thinking about? Do you mind making shift, Mr. Dewy?”

“Not at all, Miss Day,” said that civil person.

“–And only having a cup by itself? or a saucer by itself?”

“Don’t mind in the least.”

“Which do you mean by that?”

“I mean the cup, if you like the saucer.”

“And the saucer, if I like the cup?”

“Exactly, Miss Day.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dewy, for I like the cup decidedly. Stop a minute; there are no spoons now!” She dived into the hamper again, and at the end of two or three minutes looked up and said, “I suppose you don’t mind if I can’t find a spoon?”

“Not at all,” said the agreeable Richard.

“The fact is, the spoons have slipped down somewhere; right under the other things. O yes, here’s one, and only one. You would rather have one than not, I suppose, Mr. Dewy?”

“Rather not. I never did care much about spoons.”

“Then I’ll have it. I do care about them. You must stir up your tea with a knife. Would you mind lifting the kettle off, that it may not boil dry?”

Dick leapt to the fireplace, and earnestly removed the kettle.

“There! you did it so wildly that you have made your hand black. We always use kettle-holders; didn’t you learn housewifery as far as that, Mr. Dewy? Well, never mind the soot on your hand. Come here. I am going to rinse mine, too.”

They went’ to a basin she had placed in the back room. “This is the only basin I have,” she said. “Turn up your sleeves, and by that time my hands will be washed, and you can come.”

Her hands were in the water now. “O, how vexing!” she exclaimed. “There’s not a drop of water left for you, unless you draw it, and the well is I don’t know how many furlongs deep; all that was in the pitcher I used for the kettle and this basin. Do you mind dipping the tips of your fingers in the same?”

“Not at all. And to save time I won’t wait till you have done, if you have no objection?”

Thereupon he plunged in his hands, and they paddled together. It being the first time in his life that he had touched female fingers under water, Dick duly registered the sensation as rather a nice one.

“Really, I hardly know which are my own hands and which are yours, they have got so mixed up together,” she said, withdrawing her own very suddenly.

“It doesn’t matter at all,” said Dick, “at least as far as I am concerned.”

“There! no towel! Whoever thinks of a towel till the hands are wet?”

“Nobody.”

“‘Nobody.’ How very dull it is when people are so friendly! Come here, Mr. Dewy. Now do you think you could lift the lid of that box with your elbow, and then, with something or other, take out a towel you will find under the clean clothes? Be SURE don’t touch any of them with your wet hands, for the things at the top are all Starched and Ironed.”

Dick managed, by the aid of a knife and fork, to extract a towel from under a muslin dress without wetting the latter; and for a moment he ventured to assume a tone of criticism.

“I fear for that dress,” he said, as they wiped their hands together.

“What?” said Miss Day, looking into the box at the dress alluded to. “O, I know what you mean–that the vicar will never let me wear muslin?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I know it is condemned by all orders in the church as flaunting, and unfit for common wear for girls who’ve their living to get; but we’ll see.”

“In the interest of the church, I hope you don’t speak seriously.”

“Yes, I do; but we’ll see.” There was a comely determination on her lip, very pleasant to a beholder who was neither bishop, priest, nor deacon. “I think I can manage any vicar’s views about me if he’s under forty.”

Dick rather wished she had never thought of managing vicars.

“I certainly shall be glad to get some of your delicious tea,” he said in rather a free way, yet modestly, as became one in a position between that of visitor and inmate, and looking wistfully at his lonely saucer.

“So shall I. Now is there anything else we want, Mr Dewy?”

“I really think there’s nothing else, Miss Day.”

She prepared to sit down, looking musingly out of the window at Smart’s enjoyment of the rich grass. “Nobody seems to care about me,” she murmured, with large lost eyes fixed upon the sky beyond Smart.

“Perhaps Mr. Shiner does,” said Dick, in the tone of a slightly injured man.

“Yes, I forgot–he does, I know.” Dick precipitately regretted that he had suggested Shiner, since it had produced such a miserable result as this.

“I’ll warrant you’ll care for somebody very much indeed another day, won’t you, Mr. Dewy?” she continued, looking very feelingly into the mathematical centre of his eyes.

“Ah, I’ll warrant I shall,” said Dick, feelingly too, and looking back into her dark pupils, whereupon they were turned aside.

“I meant,” she went on, preventing him from speaking just as he was going to narrate a forcible story about his feelings; “I meant that nobody comes to see if I have returned–not even the vicar.”

“If you want to see him, I’ll call at the vicarage directly we have had some tea.”

“No, no! Don’t let him come down here, whatever you do, whilst I am in such a state of disarrangement. Parsons look so miserable and awkward when one’s house is in a muddle; walking about, and making impossible suggestions in quaint academic phrases till your flesh creeps and you wish them dead. Do you take sugar?”

Mr. Maybold was at this instant seen coming up the path.

“There! That’s he coming! How I wish you were not here I–that is, how awkward–dear, dear!” she exclaimed, with a quick ascent of blood to her face, and irritated with Dick rather than the vicar, as it seemed.

“Pray don’t be alarmed on my account, Miss Day–good-afternoon!” said Dick in a huff, putting on his hat, and leaving the room hastily by the back-door.

The horse was caught and put in, and on mounting the shafts to start he saw through the window the vicar, standing upon some books piled in a chair, and driving a nail into the wall; Fancy, with a demure glance, holding the canary-cage up to him, as if she had never in her life thought of anything but vicars and canaries.

CHAPTER VIII: DICK MEETS HIS FATHER

For several minutes Dick drove along homeward, with the inner eye of reflection so anxiously set on his passages at arms with Fancy, that the road and scenery were as a thin mist over the real pictures of his mind. Was she a coquette? The balance between the evidence that she did love him and that she did not was so nicely struck, that his opinion had no stability. She had let him put his hand upon hers; she had allowed her gaze to drop plumb into the depths of his–his into hers–three or four times; her manner had been very free with regard to the basin and towel; she had appeared vexed at the mention of Shiner. On the other hand, she had driven him about the house like a quiet dog or cat, said Shiner cared for her, and seemed anxious that Mr. Maybold should do the same.

Thinking thus as he neared the handpost at Mellstock Cross, sitting on the front board of the spring cart–his legs on the outside, and his whole frame jigging up and down like a candle-flame to the time of Smart’s trotting–who should he see coming down the hill but his father in the light wagon, quivering up and down on a smaller scale of shakes, those merely caused by the stones in the road. They were soon crossing each other’s front.

“Weh-hey!” said the tranter to Smiler.

“Weh-hey!” said Dick to Smart, in an echo of the same voice.

“Th’st hauled her back, I suppose?” Reuben inquired peaceably.

“Yes,” said Dick, with such a clinching period at the end that it seemed he was never going to add another word. Smiler, thinking this the close of the conversation, prepared to move on.

“Weh-hey!” said the tranter. “I tell thee what it is, Dick. That there maid is taking up thy thoughts more than’s good for thee, my sonny. Thou’rt never happy now unless th’rt making thyself miserable about her in one way or another.”

“I don’t know about that, father,” said Dick rather stupidly.

“But I do–Wey, Smiler!–‘Od rot the women, ’tis nothing else wi’ ’em nowadays but getting young men and leading ’em astray.”

“Pooh, father! you just repeat what all the common world says; that’s all you do.”

“The world’s a very sensible feller on things in jineral, Dick; very sensible indeed.”

Dick looked into the distance at a vast expanse of mortgaged estate. “I wish I was as rich as a squire when he’s as poor as a crow,” he murmured; “I’d soon ask Fancy something.”

“I wish so too, wi’ all my heart, sonny; that I do. Well, mind what beest about, that’s all.”

Smart moved on a step or two. “Supposing now, father,–We-hey, Smart!–I did think a little about her, and I had a chance, which I ha’n’t; don’t you think she’s a very good sort of–of–one?”

“Ay, good; she’s good enough. When you’ve made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand–she’s as good as any other; they be all alike in the groundwork; ’tis only in the flourishes there’s a difference. She’s good enough; but I can’t see what the nation a young feller like you–wi a comfortable house and home, and father and mother to take care o’ thee, and who sent ‘ee to a school so good that ’twas hardly fair to the other children–should want to go hollering after a young woman for, when she’s quietly making a husband in her pocket, and not troubled by chick nor chiel, to make a poverty-stric’ wife and family of her, and neither hat, cap, wig, nor waistcoat to set ’em up with: be drowned if I can see it, and that’s the long and the short o’t, my sonny.”

Dick looked at Smart’s ears, then up the hill; but no reason was suggested by any object that met his gaze.

“For about the same reason that you did, father, I suppose.”

“Dang it, my sonny, thou’st got me there!” And the tranter gave vent to a grim admiration, with the mien of a man who was too magnanimous not to appreciate artistically a slight rap on the knuckles, even if they were his own.

“Whether or no,” said Dick, “I asked her a thing going along the road.”

“Come to that, is it? Turk! won’t thy mother be in a taking! Well, she’s ready, I don’t doubt?”

“I didn’t ask her anything about having me; and if you’ll let me speak, I’ll tell ‘ee what I want to know. I just said, Did she care about me?”

“Piph-ph-ph!”

“And then she said nothing for a quarter of a mile, and then she said she didn’t know. Now, what I want to know is, what was the meaning of that speech?” The latter words were spoken resolutely, as if he didn’t care for the ridicule of all the fathers in creation.

“The meaning of that speech is,” the tranter replied deliberately, “that the meaning is meant to be rather hid at present. Well, Dick, as an honest father to thee, I don’t pretend to deny what you d’know well enough; that is, that her father being rather better in the pocket than we, I should welcome her ready enough if it must be somebody.”

“But what d’ye think she really did mean?” said the unsatisfied Dick.

“I’m afeard I am not o’ much account in guessing, especially as I was not there when she said it, and seeing that your mother was the only ‘ooman I ever cam’ into such close quarters as that with.”

“And what did mother say to you when you asked her?” said Dick musingly.

“I don’t see that that will help ‘ee.”

“The principle is the same.”

“Well–ay: what did she say? Let’s see. I was oiling my working- day boots without taking ’em off, and wi’ my head hanging down, when she just brushed on by the garden hatch like a flittering leaf. “Ann,” I said, says I, and then,–but, Dick I’m afeard ’twill be no help to thee; for we were such a rum couple, your mother and I, leastways one half was, that is myself–and your mother’s charms was more in the manner than the material.”

“Never mind! ‘Ann,’ said you.”

“‘Ann,’ said I, as I was saying . . . ‘Ann,’ I said to her when I was oiling my working-day boots wi’ my head hanging down, ‘Woot hae me?’ . . . What came next I can’t quite call up at this distance o’ time. Perhaps your mother would know,–she’s got a better memory for her little triumphs than I. However, the long and the short o’ the story is that we were married somehow, as I found afterwards. ‘Twas on White Tuesday,–Mellstock Club walked the same day, every man two and two, and a fine day ’twas,–hot as fire,–how the sun did strike down upon my back going to church! I well can mind what a bath o’ sweating I was in, body and soul! But Fance will ha’ thee, Dick–she won’t walk with another chap–no such good luck.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Dick, whipping at Smart’s flank in a fanciful way, which, as Smart knew, meant nothing in connection with going on. “There’s Pa’son Maybold, too–that’s all against me.”

“What about he? She’s never been stuffing into thy innocent heart that he’s in hove with her? Lord, the vanity o’ maidens!”