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Title:  Under the Greenwood Tree

Author:  Thomas Hardy

June, 2001  [Etext #2662]


The Project Gutenberg Etext Under the Greenwood Tree, by Hardy
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This etext was scanned by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
from the 1912 Macmillan and Co. ("Wessex") edition.  Proofing by
Margaret Price.





UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE
or
THE MELLSTOCK QUIRE
A RURAL PAINTING OF THE DUTCH SCHOOL




PREFACE



This story of the Mellstock Quire and its old established west-
gallery musicians, with some supplementary descriptions of similar
officials in Two on a Tower, A Few Crusted Characters, and other
places, is intended to be a fairly true picture, at first hand, of
the personages, ways, and customs which were common among such
orchestral bodies in the villages of fifty or sixty years ago.

One is inclined to regret the displacement of these ecclesiastical
bandsmen by an isolated organist (often at first a barrel-organist)
or harmonium player; and despite certain advantages in point of
control and accomplishment which were, no doubt, secured by
installing the single artist, the change has tended to stultify the
professed aims of the clergy, its direct result being to curtail and
extinguish the interest of parishioners in church doings.  Under the
old plan, from half a dozen to ten full-grown players, in addition
to the numerous more or less grown-up singers, were officially
occupied with the Sunday routine, and concerned in trying their best
to make it an artistic outcome of the combined musical taste of the
congregation.  With a musical executive limited, as it mostly is
limited now, to the parson's wife or daughter and the school-
children, or to the school-teacher and the children, an important
union of interests has disappeared.

The zest of these bygone instrumentalists must have been keen and
staying to take them, as it did, on foot every Sunday after a
toilsome week, through all weathers, to the church, which often lay
at a distance from their homes.  They usually received so little in
payment for their performances that their efforts were really a
labour of love.  In the parish I had in my mind when writing the
present tale, the gratuities received yearly by the musicians at
Christmas were somewhat as follows:  From the manor-house ten
shillings and a supper; from the vicar ten shillings; from the
farmers five shillings each; from each cottage-household one
shilling; amounting altogether to not more than ten shillings a head
annually--just enough, as an old executant told me, to pay for their
fiddle-strings, repairs, rosin, and music-paper (which they mostly
ruled themselves).  Their music in those days was all in their own
manuscript, copied in the evenings after work, and their music-books
were home-bound.

It was customary to inscribe a few jigs, reels, horn-pipes, and
ballads in the same book, by beginning it at the other end, the
insertions being continued from front and back till sacred and
secular met together in the middle, often with bizarre effect, the
words of some of the songs exhibiting that ancient and broad humour
which our grandfathers, and possibly grandmothers, took delight in,
and is in these days unquotable.

The aforesaid fiddle-strings, rosin, and music-paper were supplied
by a pedlar, who travelled exclusively in such wares from parish to
parish, coming to each village about every six months.  Tales are
told of the consternation once caused among the church fiddlers
when, on the occasion of their producing a new Christmas anthem, he
did not come to time, owing to being snowed up on the downs, and the
straits they were in through having to make shift with whipcord and
twine for strings.  He was generally a musician himself, and
sometimes a composer in a small way, bringing his own new tunes, and
tempting each choir to adopt them for a consideration.  Some of
these compositions which now lie before me, with their repetitions
of lines, half-lines, and half-words, their fugues and their
intermediate symphonies, are good singing still, though they would
hardly be admitted into such hymn-books as are popular in the
churches of fashionable society at the present time.

August 1896.

Under the Greenwood Tree was first brought out in the summer of 1872
in two volumes.  The name of the story was originally intended to
be, more appropriately, The Mellstock Quire, and this has been
appended as a sub-title since the early editions, it having been
thought unadvisable to displace for it the title by which the book
first became known.

In rereading the narrative after a long interval there occurs the
inevitable reflection that the realities out of which it was spun
were material for another kind of study of this little group of
church musicians than is found in the chapters here penned so
lightly, even so farcically and flippantly at times.  But
circumstances would have rendered any aim at a deeper, more
essential, more transcendent handling unadvisable at the date of
writing; and the exhibition of the Mellstock Quire in the following
pages must remain the only extant one, except for the few glimpses
of that perished band which I have given in verse elsewhere.

T. H.

April 1912.




PART THE FIRST--WINTER




CHAPTER I:  MELLSTOCK-LANE



To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as
well as its feature.  At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob
and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it
battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech
rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall.  And winter, which
modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not
destroy its individuality.

On a cold and starry Christmas-eve within living memory a man was
passing up a lane towards Mellstock Cross in the darkness of a
plantation that whispered thus distinctively to his intelligence.
All the evidences of his nature were those afforded by the spirit of
his footsteps, which succeeded each other lightly and quickly, and
by the liveliness of his voice as he sang in a rural cadence:


"With the rose and the lily
And the daffodowndilly,
The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go."


The lonely lane he was following connected one of the hamlets of
Mellstock parish with Upper Mellstock and Lewgate, and to his eyes,
casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmed birches with
their characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the dark-
creviced elm, all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the
sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their
flickering seemed like the flapping of wings.  Within the woody
pass, at a level anything lower than the horizon, all was dark as
the grave.  The copse-wood forming the sides of the bower interlaced
its branches so densely, even at this season of the year, that the
draught from the north-east flew along the channel with scarcely an
interruption from lateral breezes.

After passing the plantation and reaching Mellstock Cross the white
surface of the lane revealed itself between the dark hedgerows like
a ribbon jagged at the edges; the irregularity being caused by
temporary accumulations of leaves extending from the ditch on either
side.

The song (many times interrupted by flitting thoughts which took the
place of several bars, and resumed at a point it would have reached
had its continuity been unbroken) now received a more palpable
check, in the shape of "Ho-i-i-i-i-i!" from the crossing lane to
Lower Mellstock, on the right of the singer who had just emerged
from the trees.

"Ho-i-i-i-i-i!" he answered, stopping and looking round, though with
no idea of seeing anything more than imagination pictured.

"Is that thee, young Dick Dewy?" came from the darkness.

"Ay, sure, Michael Mail."

"Then why not stop for fellow-craters--going to thy own father's
house too, as we be, and knowen us so well?"

Dick Dewy faced about and continued his tune in an under-whistle,
implying that the business of his mouth could not be checked at a
moment's notice by the placid emotion of friendship.

Having come more into the open he could now be seen rising against
the sky, his profile appearing on the light background like the
portrait of a gentleman in black cardboard.  It assumed the form of
a low-crowned hat, an ordinary-shaped nose, an ordinary chin, an
ordinary neck, and ordinary shoulders.  What he consisted of further
down was invisible from lack of sky low enough to picture him on.

Shuffling, halting, irregular footsteps of various kinds were now
heard coming up the hill, and presently there emerged from the shade
severally five men of different ages and gaits, all of them working
villagers of the parish of Mellstock.  They, too, had lost their
rotundity with the daylight, and advanced against the sky in flat
outlines, which suggested some processional design on Greek or
Etruscan pottery.  They represented the chief portion of Mellstock
parish choir.

The first was a bowed and bent man, who carried a fiddle under his
arm, and walked as if engaged in studying some subject connected
with the surface of the road.  He was Michael Mail, the man who had
hallooed to Dick.

The next was Mr. Robert Penny, boot- and shoemaker; a little man,
who, though rather round-shouldered, walked as if that fact had not
come to his own knowledge, moving on with his back very hollow and
his face fixed on the north-east quarter of the heavens before him,
so that his lower waist-coat-buttons came first, and then the
remainder of his figure.  His features were invisible; yet when he
occasionally looked round, two faint moons of light gleamed for an
instant from the precincts of his eyes, denoting that he wore
spectacles of a circular form.

The third was Elias Spinks, who walked perpendicularly and
dramatically.  The fourth outline was Joseph Bowman's, who had now
no distinctive appearance beyond that of a human being.  Finally
came a weak lath-like form, trotting and stumbling along with one
shoulder forward and his bead inclined to the left, his arms
dangling nervelessly in the wind as if they were empty sleeves.
This was Thomas Leaf.

"Where be the boys?" said Dick to this somewhat indifferently-
matched assembly.

The eldest of the group, Michael Mail, cleared his throat from a
great depth.

"We told them to keep back at home for a time, thinken they wouldn't
be wanted yet awhile; and we could choose the tuens, and so on."

"Father and grandfather William have expected ye a little sooner.  I
have just been for a run round by Ewelease Stile and Hollow Hill to
warm my feet."

"To be sure father did!  To be sure 'a did expect us--to taste the
little barrel beyond compare that he's going to tap."

"'Od rabbit it all!  Never heard a word of it!" said Mr. Penny,
gleams of delight appearing upon his spectacle-glasses, Dick
meanwhile singing parenthetically--"The lads and the lasses a-sheep-
shearing go."

"Neighbours, there's time enough to drink a sight of drink now afore
bedtime?" said Mail.

"True, true--time enough to get as drunk as lords!" replied Bowman
cheerfully.

This opinion being taken as convincing they all advanced between the
varying hedges and the trees dotting them here and there, kicking
their toes occasionally among the crumpled leaves.  Soon appeared
glimmering indications of the few cottages forming the small hamlet
of Upper Mellstock for which they were bound, whilst the faint sound
of church-bells ringing a Christmas peal could be heard floating
over upon the breeze from the direction of Longpuddle and
Weatherbury parishes on the other side of the hills.  A little
wicket admitted them to the garden, and they proceeded up the path
to Dick's house.



CHAPTER II:  THE TRANTER'S



It was a long low cottage with a hipped roof of thatch, having
dormer windows breaking up into the eaves, a chimney standing in the
middle of the ridge and another at each end.  The window-shutters
were not yet closed, and the fire- and candle-light within radiated
forth upon the thick bushes of box and laurestinus growing in clumps
outside, and upon the bare boughs of several codlin-trees hanging
about in various distorted shapes, the result of early training as
espaliers combined with careless climbing into their boughs in later
years.  The walls of the dwelling were for the most part covered
with creepers, though these were rather beaten back from the
doorway--a feature which was worn and scratched by much passing in
and out, giving it by day the appearance of an old keyhole.  Light
streamed through the cracks and joints of outbuildings a little way
from the cottage, a sight which nourished a fancy that the purpose
of the erection must be rather to veil bright attractions than to
shelter unsightly necessaries.  The noise of a beetle and wedges and
the splintering of wood was periodically heard from this direction;
and at some little distance further a steady regular munching and
the occasional scurr of a rope betokened a stable, and horses
feeding within it.

The choir stamped severally on the door-stone to shake from their
boots any fragment of earth or leaf adhering thereto, then entered
the house and looked around to survey the condition of things.
Through the open doorway of a small inner room on the right hand, of
a character between pantry and cellar, was Dick Dewy's father
Reuben, by vocation a "tranter," or irregular carrier.  He was a
stout florid man about forty years of age, who surveyed people up
and down when first making their acquaintance, and generally smiled
at the horizon or other distant object during conversations with
friends, walking about with a steady sway, and turning out his toes
very considerably.  Being now occupied in bending over a hogshead,
that stood in the pantry ready horsed for the process of broaching,
he did not take the trouble to turn or raise his eyes at the entry
of his visitors, well knowing by their footsteps that they were the
expected old comrades.

The main room, on the left, was decked with bunches of holly and
other evergreens, and from the middle of the beam bisecting the
ceiling hung the mistletoe, of a size out of all proportion to the
room, and extending so low that it became necessary for a full-grown
person to walk round it in passing, or run the risk of entangling
his hair.  This apartment contained Mrs. Dewy the tranter's wife,
and the four remaining children, Susan, Jim, Bessy, and Charley,
graduating uniformly though at wide stages from the age of sixteen
to that of four years--the eldest of the series being separated from
Dick the firstborn by a nearly equal interval.

Some circumstance had apparently caused much grief to Charley just
previous to the entry of the choir, and he had absently taken down a
small looking-glass, holding it before his face to learn how the
human countenance appeared when engaged in crying, which survey led
him to pause at the various points in each wail that were more than
ordinarily striking, for a thorough appreciation of the general
effect.  Bessy was leaning against a chair, and glancing under the
plaits about the waist of the plaid frock she wore, to notice the
original unfaded pattern of the material as there preserved, her
face bearing an expression of regret that the brightness had passed
away from the visible portions.  Mrs. Dewy sat in a brown settle by
the side of the glowing wood fire--so glowing that with a heedful
compression of the lips she would now and then rise and put her hand
upon the hams and flitches of bacon lining the chimney, to reassure
herself that they were not being broiled instead of smoked--a
misfortune that had been known to happen now and then at Christmas-
time.

"Hullo, my sonnies, here you be, then!" said Reuben Dewy at length,
standing up and blowing forth a vehement gust of breath.  "How the
blood do puff up in anybody's head, to be sure, a-stooping like
that!  I was just going out to gate to hark for ye."  He then
carefully began to wind a strip of brown paper round a brass tap he
held in his hand.  "This in the cask here is a drop o' the right
sort" (tapping the cask); "'tis a real drop o' cordial from the best
picked apples--Sansoms, Stubbards, Five-corners, and such--like--you
d'mind the sort, Michael?" (Michael nodded.)  "And there's a
sprinkling of they that grow down by the orchard-rails--streaked
ones--rail apples we d'call 'em, as 'tis by the rails they grow, and
not knowing the right name.  The water-cider from 'em is as good as
most people's best cider is."

"Ay, and of the same make too," said Bowman.  "'It rained when we
wrung it out, and the water got into it,' folk will say.  But 'tis
on'y an excuse.  Watered cider is too common among us."

"Yes, yes; too common it is!" said Spinks with an inward sigh,
whilst his eyes seemed to be looking at the case in an abstract form
rather than at the scene before him.  "Such poor liquor do make a
man's throat feel very melancholy--and is a disgrace to the name of
stimmilent."

"Come in, come in, and draw up to the fire; never mind your shoes,"
said Mrs. Dewy, seeing that all except Dick had paused to wipe them
upon the door-mat.  "I am glad that you've stepped up-along at last;
and, Susan, you run down to Grammer Kaytes's and see if you can
borrow some larger candles than these fourteens.  Tommy Leaf, don't
ye be afeard!  Come and sit here in the settle."

This was addressed to the young man before mentioned, consisting
chiefly of a human skeleton and a smock-frock, who was very awkward
in his movements, apparently on account of having grown so very fast
that before he had had time to get used to his height he was higher.

"Hee--hee--ay!" replied Leaf, letting his mouth continue to smile
for some time after his mind had done smiling, so that his teeth
remained in view as the most conspicuous members of his body.

"Here, Mr. Penny," resumed Mrs. Dewy, "you sit in this chair.  And
how's your daughter, Mrs. Brownjohn?"

"Well, I suppose I must say pretty fair."  He adjusted his
spectacles a quarter of an inch to the right.  "But she'll be worse
before she's better, 'a b'lieve."

"Indeed--poor soul!  And how many will that make in all, four or
five?"

"Five; they've buried three.  Yes, five; and she not much more than
a maid yet.  She do know the multiplication table onmistakable well.
However, 'twas to be, and none can gainsay it."

Mrs. Dewy resigned Mr. Penny.  "Wonder where your grandfather James
is?" she inquired of one of the children.  "He said he'd drop in to-
night."

"Out in fuel-house with grandfather William," said Jimmy.

"Now let's see what we can do," was heard spoken about this time by
the tranter in a private voice to the barrel, beside which he had
again established himself, and was stooping to cut away the cork.

"Reuben, don't make such a mess o' tapping that barrel as is mostly
made in this house," Mrs. Dewy cried from the fireplace.  "I'd tap a
hundred without wasting more than you do in one.  Such a squizzling-
-and squirting job as 'tis in your hands!  There, he always was such
a clumsy man indoors."

"Ay, ay; I know you'd tap a hundred beautiful, Ann--I know you
would; two hundred, perhaps.  But I can't promise.  This is a' old
cask, and the wood's rotted away about the tap-hole.  The husbird of
a feller Sam Lawson--that ever I should call'n such, now he's dead
and gone, poor heart!--took me in completely upon the feat of buying
this cask.  'Reub,' says he--'a always used to call me plain Reub,
poor old heart!--'Reub,' he said, says he, 'that there cask, Reub,
is as good as new; yes, good as new.  'Tis a wine-hogshead; the best
port-wine in the commonwealth have been in that there cask; and you
shall have en for ten shillens, Reub,'--'a said, says he--'he's
worth twenty, ay, five-and-twenty, if he's worth one; and an iron
hoop or two put round en among the wood ones will make en worth
thirty shillens of any man's money, if--'"

"I think I should have used the eyes that Providence gave me to use
afore I paid any ten shillens for a jimcrack wine-barrel; a saint is
sinner enough not to be cheated.  But 'tis like all your family was,
so easy to be deceived."

"That's as true as gospel of this member," said Reuben.

Mrs. Dewy began a smile at the answer, then altering her lips and
refolding them so that it was not a smile, commenced smoothing
little Bessy's hair; the tranter having meanwhile suddenly become
oblivious to conversation, occupying himself in a deliberate cutting
and arrangement of some more brown paper for the broaching
operation.

"Ah, who can believe sellers!" said old Michael Mail in a carefully-
cautious voice, by way of tiding-over this critical point of
affairs.

"No one at all," said Joseph Bowman, in the tone of a man fully
agreeing with everybody.

"Ay," said Mail, in the tone of a man who did not agree with
everybody as a rule, though he did now; "I knowed a' auctioneering
feller once--a very friendly feller 'a was too.  And so one hot day
as I was walking down the front street o' Casterbridge, jist below
the King's Arms, I passed a' open winder and see him inside, stuck
upon his perch, a-selling off.  I jist nodded to en in a friendly
way as I passed, and went my way, and thought no more about it.
Well, next day, as I was oilen my boots by fuel-house door, if a
letter didn't come wi' a bill charging me with a feather--bed,
bolster, and pillers, that I had bid for at Mr. Taylor's sale.  The
shim-faced martel had knocked 'em down to me because I nodded to en
in my friendly way; and I had to pay for 'em too.  Now, I hold that
that was coming it very close, Reuben?"

"'Twas close, there's no denying," said the general voice.

"Too close, 'twas," said Reuben, in the rear of the rest.  "And as
to Sam Lawson--poor heart! now he's dead and gone too!--I'll
warrant, that if so be I've spent one hour in making hoops for that
barrel, I've spent fifty, first and last.  That's one of my hoops'--
touching it with his elbow--'that's one of mine, and that, and that,
and all these."

"Ah, Sam was a man," said Mr. Penny, contemplatively.

"Sam was!" said Bowman.

"Especially for a drap o' drink," said the tranter.

"Good, but not religious--good," suggested Mr. Penny.

The tranter nodded.  Having at last made the tap and hole quite
ready, "Now then, Suze, bring a mug," he said.  "Here's luck to us,
my sonnies!"

The tap went in, and the cider immediately squirted out in a
horizontal shower over Reuben's hands, knees, and leggings, and into
the eyes and neck of Charley, who, having temporarily put off his
grief under pressure of more interesting proceedings, was squatting
down and blinking near his father.

"There 'tis again!" said Mrs. Dewy.

"Devil take the hole, the cask, and Sam Lawson too, that good cider
should be wasted like this!" exclaimed the tranter.  "Your thumb!
Lend me your thumb, Michael!  Ram it in here, Michael!  I must get a
bigger tap, my sonnies."

"Idd it cold inthide te hole?" inquired Charley of Michael, as he
continued in a stooping posture with his thumb in the cork-hole.

"What wonderful odds and ends that chiel has in his head to be
sure!" Mrs. Dewy admiringly exclaimed from the distance.  "I lay a
wager that he thinks more about how 'tis inside that barrel than in
all the other parts of the world put together."

All persons present put on a speaking countenance of admiration for
the cleverness alluded to, in the midst of which Reuben returned.
The operation was then satisfactorily performed; when Michael arose
and stretched his head to the extremest fraction of height that his
body would allow of, to re-straighten his back and shoulders--
thrusting out his arms and twisting his features to a mass of
wrinkles to emphasize the relief aquired.  A quart or two of the
beverage was then brought to table, at which all the new arrivals
reseated themselves with wide-spread knees, their eyes meditatively
seeking out any speck or knot in the board upon which the gaze might
precipitate itself.

"Whatever is father a-biding out in fuel-house so long for?" said
the tranter.  "Never such a man as father for two things--cleaving
up old dead apple-tree wood and playing the bass-viol.  'A'd pass
his life between the two, that 'a would."  He stepped to the door
and opened it.

"Father!"

"Ay!" rang thinly from round the corner.

"Here's the barrel tapped, and we all a-waiting!"

A series of dull thuds, that had been heard without for some time
past, now ceased; and after the light of a lantern had passed the
window and made wheeling rays upon the ceiling inside the eldest of
the Dewy family appeared.



CHAPTER III:  THE ASSEMBLED QUIRE



William Dewy--otherwise grandfather William--was now about seventy;
yet an ardent vitality still preserved a warm and roughened bloom
upon his face, which reminded gardeners of the sunny side of a ripe
ribstone-pippin; though a narrow strip of forehead, that was
protected from the weather by lying above the line of his hat-brim,
seemed to belong to some town man, so gentlemanly was its whiteness.
His was a humorous and kindly nature, not unmixed with a frequent
melancholy; and he had a firm religious faith.  But to his
neighbours he had no character in particular.  If they saw him pass
by their windows when they had been bottling off old mead, or when
they had just been called long-headed men who might do anything in
the world if they chose, they thought concerning him, "Ah, there's
that good-hearted man--open as a child!"  If they saw him just after
losing a shilling or half-a-crown, or accidentally letting fall a
piece of crockery, they thought, "There's that poor weak-minded man
Dewy again!  Ah, he's never done much in the world either!"  If he
passed when fortune neither smiled nor frowned on them, they merely
thought him old William Dewy.

"Ah, so's--here you be!--Ah, Michael and Joseph and John--and you
too, Leaf! a merry Christmas all!  We shall have a rare log-wood
fire directly, Reub, to reckon by the toughness of the job I had in
cleaving 'em."  As he spoke he threw down an armful of logs which
fell in the chimney-corner with a rumble, and looked at them with
something of the admiring enmity he would have bestowed on living
people who had been very obstinate in holding their own.  "Come in,
grandfather James."

Old James (grandfather on the maternal side) had simply called as a
visitor.  He lived in a cottage by himself, and many people
considered him a miser; some, rather slovenly in his habits.  He now
came forward from behind grandfather William, and his stooping
figure formed a well-illuminated picture as he passed towards the
fire-place.  Being by trade a mason, he wore a long linen apron
reaching almost to his toes, corduroy breeches and gaiters, which,
together with his boots, graduated in tints of whitish-brown by
constant friction against lime and stone.  He also wore a very stiff
fustian coat, having folds at the elbows and shoulders as unvarying
in their arrangement as those in a pair of bellows:  the ridges and
the projecting parts of the coat collectively exhibiting a shade
different from that of the hollows, which were lined with small
ditch-like accumulations of stone and mortar-dust.  The extremely
large side-pockets, sheltered beneath wide flaps, bulged out
convexly whether empty or full; and as he was often engaged to work
at buildings far away--his breakfasts and dinners being eaten in a
strange chimney-corner, by a garden wall, on a heap of stones, or
walking along the road--he carried in these pockets a small tin
canister of butter, a small canister of sugar, a small canister of
tea, a paper of salt, and a paper of pepper; the bread, cheese, and
meat, forming the substance of his meals, hanging up behind him in
his basket among the hammers and chisels.  If a passer-by looked
hard at him when he was drawing forth any of these, "My buttery," he
said, with a pinched smile.

"Better try over number seventy-eight before we start, I suppose?"
said William, pointing to a heap of old Christmas-carol books on a
side table.

"Wi' all my heart," said the choir generally.

"Number seventy-eight was always a teaser--always.  I can mind him
ever since I was growing up a hard boy-chap."

"But he's a good tune, and worth a mint o' practice," said Michael.

"He is; though I've been mad enough wi' that tune at times to seize
en and tear en all to linnit.  Ay, he's a splendid carrel--there's
no denying that."

"The first line is well enough," said Mr. Spinks; "but when you come
to 'O, thou man,' you make a mess o't."

"We'll have another go into en, and see what we can make of the
martel.  Half-an-hour's hammering at en will conquer the toughness
of en; I'll warn it."

"'Od rabbit it all!" said Mr. Penny, interrupting with a flash of
his spectacles, and at the same time clawing at something in the
depths of a large side-pocket.  "If so be I hadn't been as scatter-
brained and thirtingill as a chiel, I should have called at the
schoolhouse wi' a boot as I cam up along.  Whatever is coming to me
I really can't estimate at all!"

"The brain has its weaknesses," murmured Mr. Spinks, waving his head
ominously.  Mr. Spinks was considered to be a scholar, having once
kept a night-school, and always spoke up to that level.

"Well, I must call with en the first thing tomorrow.  And I'll empt
my pocket o' this last too, if you don't mind, Mrs. Dewy."  He drew
forth a last, and placed it on a table at his elbow.  The eyes of
three or four followed it.

"Well," said the shoemaker, seeming to perceive that the interest
the object had excited was greater than he had anticipated, and
warranted the last's being taken up again and exhibited; "now, whose
foot do ye suppose this last was made for?  It was made for Geoffrey
Day's father, over at Yalbury Wood.  Ah, many's the pair o' boots
he've had off the last!  Well, when 'a died, I used the last for
Geoffrey, and have ever since, though a little doctoring was wanted
to make it do.  Yes, a very queer natured last it is now, 'a
b'lieve," he continued, turning it over caressingly.  "Now, you
notice that there" (pointing to a lump of leather bradded to the
toe), "that's a very bad bunion that he've had ever since 'a was a
boy.  Now, this remarkable large piece" (pointing to a patch nailed
to the side), "shows a' accident he received by the tread of a
horse, that squashed his foot a'most to a pomace.  The horseshoe cam
full-butt on this point, you see.  And so I've just been over to
Geoffrey's, to know if he wanted his bunion altered or made bigger
in the new pair I'm making."

During the hatter part of this speech, Mr. Penny's left hand
wandered towards the cider-cup, as if the hand had no connection
with the person speaking; and bringing his sentence to an abrupt
chose, all but the extreme margin of the bootmaker's face was
eclipsed by the circular brim of the vessel.

"However, I was going to say," continued Penny, putting down the
cup, "I ought to have called at the school'--here he went groping
again in the depths of his pocket--'to leave this without fail,
though I suppose the first thing to-morrow will do."

He now drew forth and placed upon the table a boot--small, light,
and prettily shaped--upon the heel of which he had been operating.

"The new schoolmistress's!"

"Ay, no less, Miss Fancy Day; as neat a little figure of fun as ever
I see, and just husband-high."

"Never Geoffrey's daughter Fancy?" said Bowman, as all glances
present converged like wheel-spokes upon the boot in the centre of
them.

"Yes, sure," resumed Mr. Penny, regarding the boot as if that alone
were his auditor; "'tis she that's come here schoolmistress.  You
knowed his daughter was in training?"

"Strange, isn't it, for her to be here Christmas night, Master
Penny?"

"Yes; but here she is, 'a b'lieve."

"I know how she comes here--so I do!" chirruped one of the children.

"Why?" Dick inquired, with subtle interest.

"Pa'son Maybold was afraid he couldn't manage us all to-morrow at
the dinner, and he talked o' getting her jist to come over and help
him hand about the plates, and see we didn't make pigs of ourselves;
and that's what she's come for!"

"And that's the boot, then," continued its mender imaginatively,
"that she'll walk to church in tomorrow morning.  I don't care to
mend boots I don't make; but there's no knowing what it may lead to,
and her father always comes to me."

There, between the cider--mug and the candle, stood this interesting
receptacle of the little unknown's foot; and a very pretty boot it
was.  A character, in fact--the flexible bend at the instep, the
rounded localities of the small nestling toes, scratches from
careless scampers now forgotten--all, as repeated in the tell-tale
leather, evidencing a nature and a bias.  Dick surveyed it with a
delicate feeling that he had no right to do so without having first
asked the owner of the foot's permission.

"Now, neighbours, though no common eye can see it," the shoemaker,
went on, "a man in the trade can see the likeness between this boot
and that last, although that is so deformed as hardly to recall one
of God's creatures, and this is one of as pretty a pair as you'd get
for ten-and-sixpence in Casterbridge.  To you, nothing; but 'tis
father's voot and daughter's voot to me, as plain as houses."

"I don't doubt there's a likeness, Master Penny--a mild likeness--a
fantastical likeness," said Spinks.  "But _I_ han't got imagination
enough to see it, perhaps."

Mr. Penny adjusted his spectacles.

"Now, I'll tell ye what happened to me once on this very point.  You
used to know Johnson the dairyman, William?"

"Ay, sure; I did."

"Well, 'twasn't opposite his house, but a little lower down--by his
paddock, in front o' Parkmaze Pool.  I was a-bearing across towards
Bloom's End,--and ho and behold, there was a man just brought out o'
the Pool, dead; he had un'rayed for a dip, but not being able to
pitch it just there had gone in flop over his head.  Men looked at
en; women looked at en; children looked at en; nobody knowed en.  He
was covered wi' a sheet; but I catched sight of his voot, just
showing out as they carried en along.  'I don't care what name that
man went by,' I said, in my way, 'but he's John Woodward's brother;
I can swear to the family voot.'  At that very moment up comes John
Woodward, weeping and teaving, 'I've lost my brother!  I've lost my
brother!'"

"Only to think of that!" said Mrs. Dewy.

"'Tis well enough to know this foot and that foot," said Mr. Spinks.
"'Tis long-headed, in fact, as far as feet do go.  I know little,
'tis true--I say no more; but show ME a man's foot, and I'll tell
you that man's heart."

"You must be a cleverer feller, then, than mankind in jineral," said
the tranter.

"Well, that's nothing for me to speak of," returned Mr. Spinks.  "A
man hives and learns.  Maybe I've read a leaf or two in my time.  I
don't wish to say anything large, mind you; but nevertheless, maybe
I have."

"Yes, I know," said Michael soothingly, "and all the parish knows,
that ye've read sommat of everything a'most, and have been a great
filler of young folks' brains.  Learning's a worthy thing, and ye've
got it, Master Spinks."

"I make no boast, though I may have read and thought a little; and I
know--it may be from much perusing, but I make no boast--that by the
time a man's head is finished, 'tis almost time for him to creep
underground.  I am over forty-five."

Mr. Spinks emitted a hook to signify that if his head was not
finished, nobody's head ever could be.

"Talk of knowing people by their feet!" said Reuben.  "Rot me, my
sonnies, then, if I can tell what a man is from all his members put
together, oftentimes."

"But still, look is a good deal," observed grandfather William
absently, moving and balancing his head till the tip of grandfather
James's nose was exactly in a right line with William's eye and the
mouth of a miniature cavern he was discerning in the fire.  "By the
way," he continued in a fresher voice, and looking up, "that young
crater, the schoolmis'ess, must be sung to to-night wi' the rest?
If her ear is as fine as her face, we shall have enough to do to be
up-sides with her."

"What about her face?" said young Dewy.

"Well, as to that," Mr. Spinks replied, "'tis a face you can hardly
gainsay.  A very good pink face, as far as that do go.  Still, only
a face, when all is said and done."

"Come, come, Elias Spinks, say she's a pretty maid, and have done
wi' her," said the tranter, again preparing to visit the cider-
barrel.



CHAPTER IV:  GOING THE ROUNDS



Shortly after ten o'clock the singing-boys arrived at the tranter's
house, which was invariably the place of meeting, and preparations
were made for the start.  The older men and musicians wore thick
coats, with stiff perpendicular collars, and coloured handkerchiefs
wound round and round the neck till the end came to hand, over all
which they just showed their ears and noses, like people looking
over a wall.  The remainder, stalwart ruddy men and boys, were
dressed mainly in snow-white smock-frocks, embroidered upon the
shoulders and breasts, in ornamental forms of hearts, diamonds, and
zigzags.  The cider-mug was emptied for the ninth time, the music-
books were arranged, and the pieces finally decided upon.  The boys
in the meantime put the old horn-lanterns in order, cut candles into
short lengths to fit the lanterns; and, a thin fleece of snow having
fallen since the early part of the evening, those who had no
leggings went to the stable and wound wisps of hay round their
ankles to keep the insidious flakes from the interior of their
boots.

Mellstock was a parish of considerable acreage, the hamlets
composing it lying at a much greater distance from each other than
is ordinarily the case.  Hence several hours were consumed in
playing and singing within hearing of every family, even if but a
single air were bestowed on each.  There was Lower Mellstock, the
main village; half a mile from this were the church and vicarage,
and a few other houses, the spot being rather lonely now, though in
past centuries it had been the most thickly-populated quarter of the
parish.  A mile north-east hay the hamlet of Upper Mellstock, where
the tranter lived; and at other points knots of cottages, besides
solitary farmsteads and dairies.

Old William Dewy, with the violoncello, played the bass; his
grandson Dick the treble violin; and Reuben and Michael Mail the
tenor and second violins respectively.  The singers consisted of
four men and seven boys, upon whom devolved the task of carrying and
attending to the lanterns, and holding the books open for the
players.  Directly music was the theme, old William ever and
instinctively came to the front.

"Now mind, neighbours," he said, as they all went out one by one at
the door, he himself holding it ajar and regarding them with a
critical face as they passed, like a shepherd counting out his
sheep.  "You two counter-boys, keep your ears open to Michael's
fingering, and don't ye go straying into the treble part along o'
Dick and his set, as ye did last year; and mind this especially when
we be in "Arise, and hail."  Billy Chimlen, don't you sing quite so
raving mad as you fain would; and, all o' ye, whatever ye do, keep
from making a great scuffle on the ground when we go in at people's
gates; but go quietly, so as to strike up all of a sudden, like
spirits."

"Farmer Ledlow's first?"

"Farmer Ledlow's first; the rest as usual."

"And, Voss," said the tranter terminatively, "you keep house here
till about half-past two; then heat the metheglin and cider in the
warmer you'll find turned up upon the copper; and bring it wi' the
victuals to church-hatch, as th'st know."


Just before the chock struck twelve they lighted the lanterns and
started.  The moon, in her third quarter, had risen since the
snowstorm; but the dense accumulation of snow-cloud weakened her
power to a faint twilight, which was rather pervasive of the
landscape than traceable to the sky.  The breeze had gone down, and
the rustle of their feet and tones of their speech echoed with an
alert rebound from every post, boundary-stone, and ancient wall they
passed, even where the distance of the echo's origin was less than a
few yards.  Beyond their own slight noises nothing was to be heard,
save the occasional bark of foxes in the direction of Yalbury Wood,
or the brush of a rabbit among the grass now and then, as it
scampered out of their way.

Most of the outlying homesteads and hamlets had been visited by
about two o'clock; they then passed across the outskirts of a wooded
park toward the main village, nobody being at home at the Manor.
Pursuing no recognized track, great care was necessary in walking
lest their faces should come in contact with the low-hanging boughs
of the old lime-trees, which in many spots formed dense over-growths
of interlaced branches.

"Times have changed from the times they used to be," said Mail,
regarding nobody can tell what interesting old panoramas with an
inward eye, and letting his outward glance rest on the ground,
because it was as convenient a position as any.  "People don't care
much about us now!  I've been thinking we must be almost the last
left in the county of the old string players?  Barrel-organs, and
the things next door to 'em that you blow wi' your foot, have come
in terribly of late years."

"Ay!" said Bowman, shaking his head; and old William, on seeing him,
did the same thing.

"More's the pity," replied another.  "Time was--long and merry ago
now!--when not one of the varmits was to be heard of; but it served
some of the quires right.  They should have stuck to strings as we
did, and kept out clarinets, and done away with serpents.  If you'd
thrive in musical religion, stick to strings, says I."

"Strings be safe soul-lifters, as far as that do go," said Mr.
Spinks.

"Yet there's worse things than serpents," said Mr. Penny.  "Old
things pass away, 'tis true; but a serpent was a good old note:  a
deep rich note was the serpent."

"Clar'nets, however, be bad at all times," said Michael Mail.  "One
Christmas--years agone now, years--I went the rounds wi' the
Weatherbury quire.  'Twas a hard frosty night, and the keys of all
the clar'nets froze--ah, they did freeze!--so that 'twas like
drawing a cork every time a key was opened; and the players o' 'em
had to go into a hedger-and-ditcher's chimley-corner, and thaw their
clar'nets every now and then.  An icicle o' spet hung down from the
end of every man's clar'net a span long; and as to fingers--well,
there, if ye'll believe me, we bad no fingers at all, to our
knowing."

"I can well bring back to my mind," said Mr. Penny, "what I said to
poor Joseph Ryme (who took the treble part in Chalk-Newton Church
for two-and-forty year) when they thought of having clar'nets there.
"Joseph," I said, says I, "depend upon't, if so be you have them
tooting clar'nets you'll spoil the whole set-out.  Clar'nets were
not made for the service of the Lard; you can see it by looking at
'em," I said.  And what came o't?  Why, souls, the parson set up a
barrel-organ on his own account within two years o' the time I
spoke, and the old quire went to nothing."

"As far as look is concerned," said the tranter, "I don't for my
part see that a fiddle is much nearer heaven than a clar'net.  'Tis
further off.  There's always a rakish, scampish twist about a
fiddle's looks that seems to say the Wicked One had a hand in making
o'en; while angels be supposed to play clar'nets in heaven, or
som'at like 'em, if ye may believe picters."

"Robert Penny, you was in the right," broke in the eldest Dewy.
"They should ha' stuck to strings.  Your brass-man is a rafting dog-
-well and good; your reed-man is a dab at stirring ye--well and
good; your drum-man is a rare bowel-shaker--good again.  But I don't
care who hears me say it, nothing will spak to your heart wi' the
sweetness o' the man of strings!"

"Strings for ever!" said little Jimmy.

"Strings alone would have held their ground against all the new
comers in creation."  ("True, true!" said Bowman.)  "But clarinets
was death."  ("Death they was!" said Mr. Penny.)  "And harmonions,"
William continued in a louder voice, and getting excited by these
signs of approval, "harmonions and barrel-organs"  ("Ah!" and groans
from Spinks) "be miserable--what shall I call 'em?--miserable--"

"Sinners," suggested Jimmy, who made large strides like the men, and
did not lag behind like the other little boys.

"Miserable dumbledores!"

"Right, William, and so they be--miserable dumbledores!" said the
choir with unanimity.

By this time they were crossing to a gate in the direction of the
school, which, standing on a slight eminence at the junction of
three ways, now rose in unvarying and dark flatness against the sky.
The instruments were retuned, and all the band entered the school
enclosure, enjoined by old William to keep upon the grass.

"Number seventy-eight," he softly gave out as they formed round in a
semicircle, the boys opening the lanterns to get a clearer light,
and directing their rays on the books.

Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time-worn
hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted
from father to son through several generations down to the present
characters, who sang them out right earnestly:


"Remember Adam's fall,
O thou Man:
Remember Adam's fall
From Heaven to Hell.
Remember Adam's fall
How he hath condemn'd all
In Hell perpetual
There for to dwell.

Remember God's goodnesse,
O thou Man:
Remember God's goodnesse,
His promise made.
Remember God's goodnesse;
He sent His Son sinlesse
Our ails for to redress;
Be not afraid

In Bethlehem He was born,
O thou Man:
In Bethlehem He was born,
For mankind's sake.

In Bethlehem He was born,
Christmas-day i' the morn:
Our Saviour thought no scorn
Our faults to take.

Give thanks to God alway,
O thou Man:
Give thanks to God alway
With heart-most joy.
Give thanks to God alway
On this our joyful day:
Let all men sing and say,
Holy, Holy!"


Having concluded the last note, they listened for a minute or two,
but found that no sound issued from the schoolhouse.

"Four breaths, and then, "O, what unbounded goodness!" number fifty-
nine," said William.

This was duly gone through, and no notice whatever seemed to be
taken of the performance.

"Good guide us, surely 'tisn't a' empty house, as befell us in the
year thirty-nine and forty-three!" said old Dewy.

"Perhaps she's jist come from some musical city, and sneers at our
doings?" the tranter whispered.

"'Od rabbit her!" said Mr. Penny, with an annihilating look at a
corner of the school chimney, "I don't quite stomach her, if this is
it.  Your plain music well done is as worthy as your other sort done
bad, a' b'lieve, souls; so say I."

"Four breaths, and then the last," said the leader authoritatively.
"'Rejoice, ye Tenants of the Earth,' number sixty-four."

At the close, waiting yet another minute, he said in a clear loud
voice, as he had said in the village at that hour and season for the
previous forty years--"A merry Christmas to ye!"



CHAPTER V:  THE LISTENERS



When the expectant stillness consequent upon the exclamation had
nearly died out of them all, an increasing light made itself visible
in one of the windows of the upper floor.  It came so close to the
blind that the exact position of the flame could be perceived from
the outside.  Remaining steady for an instant, the blind went upward
from before it, revealing to thirty concentrated eyes a young girl,
framed as a picture by the window architrave, and unconsciously
illuminating her countenance to a vivid brightness by a candle she
held in her left hand, close to her face, her right hand being
extended to the side of the window.  She was wrapped in a white robe
of some kind, whilst down her shoulders fell a twining profusion of
marvellously rich hair, in a wild disorder which proclaimed it to be
only during the invisible hours of the night that such a condition
was discoverable.  Her bright eyes were looking into the grey world
outside with an uncertain expression, oscillating between courage
and shyness, which, as she recognized the semicircular group of dark
forms gathered before her, transformed itself into pheasant
resolution.

Opening the window, she said lightly and warmly--"Thank you,
singers, thank you!"

Together went the window quickly and quietly, and the blind started
downward on its return to its place.  Her fair forehead and eyes
vanished; her little mouth; her neck and shoulders; all of her.
Then the spot of candlelight shone nebulously as before; then it
moved away.

"How pretty!" exclaimed Dick Dewy.

"If she'd been rale wexwork she couldn't ha' been comelier," said
Michael Mail.

"As near a thing to a spiritual vision as ever I wish to see!" said
tranter Dewy.

"O, sich I never, never see!" said Leaf fervently.

All the rest, after clearing their threats and adjusting their hats,
agreed that such a sight was worth singing for.

"Now to Farmer Shiner's, and then replenish our insides, father?"
said the tranter.

"Wi' all my heart," said old William, shouldering his bass-viol.

Farmer Shiner's was a queer lump of a house, standing at the corner
of a lane that ran into the principal thoroughfare.  The upper
windows were much wider than they were high, and this feature,
together with a broad bay-window where the door might have been
expected, gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned
askance, and wearing a sly and wicked leer.  To-night nothing was
visible but the outline of the roof upon the sky.

The front of this building was reached, and the preliminaries
arranged as usual.

"Four breaths, and number thirty-two, 'Behold the Morning Star,'"
said old William.

They had reached the end of the second verse, and the fiddlers were
doing the up bow-stroke previously to pouring forth the opening
chord of the third verse, when, without a light appearing or any
signal being given, a roaring voice exclaimed -

"Shut up, woll 'ee!  Don't make your blaring row here!  A feller wi'
a headache enough to split his skull likes a quiet night!"

Slam went the window.

"Hullo, that's a' ugly blow for we!" said the tranter, in a keenly
appreciative voice, and turning to his companions.

"Finish the carrel, all who be friends of harmony!" commanded old
William; and they continued to the end.

"Four breaths, and number nineteen!" said William firmly.  "Give it
him well; the quire can't be insulted in this manner!"

A light now flashed into existence, the window opened, and the
farmer stood revealed as one in a terrific passion.

"Drown en!--drown en!" the tranter cried, fiddling frantically.
"Play fortissimy, and drown his spaking!"

"Fortissimy!" said Michael Mail, and the music and singing waxed so
loud that it was impossible to know what Mr. Shiner had said, was
saying, or was about to say; but wildly flinging his arms and body
about in the forms of capital Xs and Ys, he appeared to utter enough
invectives to consign the whole parish to perdition.

"Very onseemly--very!" said old William, as they retired.  "Never
such a dreadful scene in the whole round o' my carrel practice--
never!  And he a churchwarden!"

"Only a drap o' drink got into his head," said the tranter.  "Man's
well enough when he's in his religious frame.  He's in his worldly
frame now.  Must ask en to our bit of a party to-morrow night, I
suppose, and so put en in humour again.  We bear no mortal man ill-
will."

They now crossed Mellstock Bridge, and went along an embowered path
beside the Froom towards the church and vicarage, meeting Voss with
the hot mead and bread-and-cheese as they were approaching the
churchyard.  This determined them to eat and drink before proceeding
further, and they entered the church and ascended to the gallery.
The lanterns were opened, and the whole body sat round against the
walls on benches and whatever else was available, and made a hearty
meal.  In the pauses of conversation there could be heard through
the floor overhead a little world of undertones and creaks from the
halting clockwork, which never spread further than the tower they
were born in, and raised in the more meditative minds a fancy that
here hay the direct pathway of Time.

Having done eating and drinking, they again tuned the instruments,
and once more the party emerged into the night air.

"Where's Dick?" said old Dewy.

Every man hooked round upon every other man, as if Dick might have
been transmuted into one or the other; and then they said they
didn't know.

"Well now, that's what I call very nasty of Master Dicky, that I
do," said Michael Mail.

"He've clinked off home-along, depend upon't," another suggested,
though not quite believing that he had.

"Dick!" exclaimed the tranter, and his voice rolled sonorously forth
among the yews.

He suspended his muscles rigid as stone whilst listening for an
answer, and finding he listened in vain, turned to the assemblage.

"The treble man too!  Now if he'd been a tenor or counter chap, we
might ha' contrived the rest o't without en, you see.  But for a
quire to lose the treble, why, my sonnies, you may so well lose your
. . . "  The tranter paused, unable to mention an image vast enough
for the occasion.

"Your head at once," suggested Mr. Penny.

The tranter moved a pace, as if it were puerile of people to
complete sentences when there were more pressing things to be done.

"Was ever heard such a thing as a young man leaving his work half
done and turning tail like this!"

"Never," replied Bowman, in a tone signifying that he was the last
man in the world to wish to withhold the formal finish required of
him.

"I hope no fatal tragedy has overtook the had!" said his
grandfather.

"O no," replied tranter Dewy placidly.  "Wonder where he's put that
there fiddle of his.  Why that fiddle cost thirty shillings, and
good words besides.  Somewhere in the damp, without doubt; that
instrument will be unglued and spoilt in ten minutes--ten! ay, two."

"What in the name o' righteousness can have happened?" said old
William, more uneasily.  "Perhaps he's drownded!"

"Leaving their lanterns and instruments in the belfry they retraced
their steps along the waterside track.  "A strapping lad like Dick
d'know better than let anything happen onawares," Reuben remarked.
"There's sure to be some poor little scram reason for't staring us
in the face all the while."  He lowered his voice to a mysterious
tone:  'Neighbours, have ye noticed any sign of a scornful woman in
his head, or suchlike?"

"Not a glimmer of such a body.  He's as clear as water yet."

"And Dicky said he should never marry," cried Jimmy, "but live at
home always along wi' mother and we!"

"Ay, ay, my sonny; every had has said that in his time."

They had now again reached the precincts of Mr. Shiner's, but
hearing nobody in that direction, one or two went across to the
schoolhouse.  A light was still burning in the bedroom, and though
the blind was down, the window had been slightly opened, as if to
admit the distant notes of the carollers to the ears of the occupant
of the room.

Opposite the window, leaning motionless against a beech tree, was
the lost man, his arms folded, his head thrown back, his eyes fixed
upon the illuminated lattice.

"Why, Dick, is that thee?  What b'st doing here?"

Dick's body instantly flew into a more rational attitude, and his
head was seen to turn east and west in the gloom, as if endeavouring
to discern some proper answer to that question; and at last he said
in rather feeble accents--"Nothing, father."

"Th'st take long enough time about it then, upon my body," said the
tranter, as they all turned anew towards the vicarage.

"I thought you hadn't done having snap in the gallery," said Dick.

"Why, we've been traypsing and rambling about, looking everywhere,
and thinking you'd done fifty deathly things, and here have you been
at nothing at all!"

"The stupidness lies in that point of it being nothing at all,"
murmured Mr. Spinks.

The vicarage front was their next field of operation, and Mr.
Maybold, the lately-arrived incumbent, duly received his share of
the night's harmonies.  It was hoped that by reason of his
profession he would have been led to open the window, and an extra
carol in quick time was added to draw him forth.  But Mr. Maybold
made no stir.

"A bad sign!" said old William, shaking his head.

However, at that same instant a musical voice was heard exclaiming
from inner depths of bedclothes--"Thanks, villagers!"

"What did he say?" asked Bowman, who was rather dull of hearing.
Bowman's voice, being therefore loud, had been heard by the vicar
within.

"I said, 'Thanks, villagers!'" cried the vicar again.

"Oh, we didn't hear 'ee the first time!" cried Bowman.

"Now don't for heaven's sake spoil the young man's temper by
answering like that!" said the tranter.

"You won't do that, my friends!" the vicar shouted.

"Well to be sure, what ears!" said Mr. Penny in a whisper.  "Beats
any horse or dog in the parish, and depend upon't, that's a sign
he's a proper clever chap."

"We shall see that in time," said the tranter.

Old William, in his gratitude for such thanks from a comparatively
new inhabitant, was anxious to play all the tunes over again; but
renounced his desire on being reminded by Reuben that it would be
best to leave well alone.

"Now putting two and two together," the tranter continued, as they
went their way over the hill, and across to the last remaining
houses; "that is, in the form of that young female vision we zeed
just now, and this young tenor-voiced parson, my belief is she'll
wind en round her finger, and twist the pore young feller about like
the figure of 8--that she will so, my sonnies."



CHAPTER VI:  CHRISTMAS MORNING



The choir at last reached their beds, and slept like the rest of the
parish.  Dick's slumbers, through the three or four hours remaining
for rest, were disturbed and slight; an exhaustive variation upon
the incidents that had passed that night in connection with the
school-window going on in his brain every moment of the time.

In the morning, do what he would--go upstairs, downstairs, out of
doors, speak of the wind and weather, or what not--he could not
refrain from an unceasing renewal, in imagination, of that
interesting enactment.  Tilted on the edge of one foot he stood
beside the fireplace, watching his mother grilling rashers; but
there was nothing in grilling, he thought, unless the Vision
grilled.  The limp rasher hung down between the bars of the gridiron
like a cat in a child's arms; but there was nothing in similes,
unless She uttered them.  He looked at the daylight shadows of a
yellow hue, dancing with the firelight shadows in blue on the
whitewashed chimney corner, but there was nothing in shadows.
"Perhaps the new young wom--sch--Miss Fancy Day will sing in church
with us this morning," he said.

The tranter looked a long time before he replied, "I fancy she will;
and yet I fancy she won't."

Dick implied that such a remark was rather to be tolerated than
admired; though deliberateness in speech was known to have, as a
rule, more to do with the machinery of the tranter's throat than
with the matter enunciated.

They made preparations for going to church as usual; Dick with
extreme alacrity, though he would not definitely consider why he was
so religious.  His wonderful nicety in brushing and cleaning his
best light boots had features which elevated it to the rank of an
art.  Every particle and speck of last week's mud was scraped and
brushed from toe and heel; new blacking from the packet was
carefully mixed and made use of, regardless of expense.  A coat was
laid on and polished; then another coat for increased blackness; and
lastly a third, to give the perfect and mirror-like jet which the
hoped-for rencounter demanded.

It being Christmas-day, the tranter prepared himself with Sunday
particularity.  Loud sousing and snorting noises were heard to
proceed from a tub in the back quarters of the dwelling, proclaiming
that he was there performing his great Sunday wash, lasting half-an-
hour, to which his washings on working-day mornings were mere
flashes in the pan.  Vanishing into the outhouse with a large brown
towel, and the above-named bubblings and snortings being carried on
for about twenty minutes, the tranter would appear round the edge of
the door, smelling like a summer fog, and looking as if he had just
narrowly escaped a watery grave with the loss of much of his
clothes, having since been weeping bitterly till his eyes were red;
a crystal drop of water hanging ornamentally at the bottom of each
ear, one at the tip of his nose, and others in the form of spangles
about his hair.

After a great deal of crunching upon the sanded stone floor by the
feet of father, son, and grandson as they moved to and fro in these
preparations, the bass-viol and fiddles were taken from their nook,
and the strings examined and screwed a little above concert-pitch,
that they might keep their tone when the service began, to obviate
the awkward contingency of having to retune them at the back of the
gallery during a cough, sneeze, or amen--an inconvenience which had
been known to arise in damp wintry weather.

The three left the door and paced down Mellstock-lane and across the
ewe-lease, bearing under their arms the instruments in faded green-
baize bags, and old brown music-books in their hands; Dick
continually finding himself in advance of the other two, and the
tranter moving on with toes turned outwards to an enormous angle.

At the foot of an incline the church became visible through the
north gate, or 'church hatch,' as it was called here.  Seven agile
figures in a clump were observable beyond, which proved to be the
choristers waiting; sitting on an altar-tomb to pass the time, and
letting their heels dangle against it.  The musicians being now in
sight, the youthful party scampered off and rattled up the old
wooden stairs of the gallery like a regiment of cavalry; the other
boys of the parish waiting outside and observing birds, cats, and
other creatures till the vicar entered, when they suddenly subsided
into sober church-goers, and passed down the aisle with echoing
heels.

The gallery of Mellstock Church had a status and sentiment of its
own.  A stranger there was regarded with a feeling altogether
differing from that of the congregation below towards him.  Banished
from the nave as an intruder whom no originality could make
interesting, he was received above as a curiosity that no unfitness
could render dull.  The gallery, too, looked down upon and knew the
habits of the nave to its remotest peculiarity, and had an extensive
stock of exclusive information about it; whilst the nave knew
nothing of the gallery folk, as gallery folk, beyond their loud-
sounding minims and chest notes.  Such topics as that the clerk was
always chewing tobacco except at the moment of crying amen; that he
had a dust-hole in his pew; that during the sermon certain young
daughters of the village had left off caring to read anything so
mild as the marriage service for some years, and now regularly
studied the one which chronologically follows it; that a pair of
lovers touched fingers through a knot-hole between their pews in the
manner ordained by their great exemplars, Pyramus and Thisbe; that
Mrs. Ledlow, the farmer's wife, counted her money and reckoned her
week's marketing expenses during the first lesson--all news to those
below--were stale subjects here.

Old William sat in the centre of the front row, his violoncello
between his knees and two singers on each hand.  Behind him, on the
left, came the treble singers and Dick; and on the right the tranter
and the tenors.  Farther back was old Mail with the altos and
supernumeraries.

But before they had taken their places, and whilst they were
standing in a circle at the back of the gallery practising a psalm
or two, Dick cast his eyes over his grandfather's shoulder, and saw
the vision of the past night enter the porch-door as methodically as
if she had never been a vision at all.  A new atmosphere seemed
suddenly to be puffed into the ancient edifice by her movement,
which made Dick's body and soul tingle with novel sensations.
Directed by Shiner, the churchwarden, she proceeded to the small
aisle on the north side of the chancel, a spot now allotted to a
throng of Sunday-school girls, and distinctly visible from the
gallery-front by looking under the curve of the furthermost arch on
that side.

Before this moment the church had seemed comparatively empty--now it
was thronged; and as Miss Fancy rose from her knees and looked
around her for a permanent place in which to deposit herself--
finally choosing the remotest corner--Dick began to breathe more
freely the warm new air she had brought with her; to feel rushings
of blood, and to have impressions that there was a tie between her
and himself visible to all the congregation.

Ever afterwards the young man could recollect individually each part
of the service of that bright Christmas morning, and the trifling
occurrences which took place as its minutes slowly drew along; the
duties of that day dividing themselves by a complete line from the
services of other times.  The tunes they that morning essayed
remained with him for years, apart from all others; also the text;
also the appearance of the layer of dust upon the capitals of the
piers; that the holly-bough in the chancel archway was hung a little
out of the centre--all the ideas, in short, that creep into the mind
when reason is only exercising its lowest activity through the eye.

By chance or by fate, another young man who attended Mellstock
Church on that Christmas morning had towards the end of the service
the same instinctive perception of an interesting presence, in the
shape of the same bright maiden, though his emotion reached a far
less developed stage.  And there was this difference, too, that the
person in question was surprised at his condition, and sedulously
endeavoured to reduce himself to his normal state of mind.  He was
the young vicar, Mr. Maybold.

The music on Christmas mornings was frequently below the standard of
church-performances at other times.  The boys were sleepy from the
heavy exertions of the night; the men were slightly wearied; and
now, in addition to these constant reasons, there was a dampness in
the atmosphere that still further aggravated the evil.  Their
strings, from the recent long exposure to the night air, rose whole
semitones, and snapped with a loud twang at the most silent moment;
which necessitated more retiring than ever to the back of the
gallery, and made the gallery throats quite husky with the quantity
of coughing and hemming required for tuning in.  The vicar looked
cross.

When the singing was in progress there was suddenly discovered to be
a strong and shrill reinforcement from some point, ultimately found
to be the school-girls' aisle.  At every attempt it grew bolder and
more distinct.  At the third time of singing, these intrusive
feminine voices were as mighty as those of the regular singers; in
fact, the flood of sound from this quarter assumed such an
individuality, that it had a time, a key, almost a tune of its own,
surging upwards when the gallery plunged downwards, and the reverse.

Now this had never happened before within the memory of man.  The
girls, like the rest of the congregation, had always been humble and
respectful followers of the gallery; singing at sixes and sevens if
without gallery leaders; never interfering with the ordinances of
these practised artists--having no will, union, power, or proclivity
except it was given them from the established choir enthroned above
them.

A good deal of desperation became noticeable in the gallery throats
and strings, which continued throughout the musical portion of the
service.  Directly the fiddles were laid down, Mr. Penny's
spectacles put in their sheath, and the text had been given out, an
indignant whispering began.

"Did ye hear that, souls?" Mr. Penny said, in a groaning breath.

"Brazen-faced hussies!" said Bowman.

"True; why, they were every note as loud as we, fiddles and all, if
not louder!"

"Fiddles and all!" echoed Bowman bitterly.

"Shall anything saucier be found than united 'ooman?" Mr. Spinks
murmured.

"What I want to know is," said the tranter (as if he knew already,
but that civilization required the form of words), "what business
people have to tell maidens to sing like that when they don't sit in
a gallery, and never have entered one in their lives?  That's the
question, my sonnies."

"'Tis the gallery have got to sing, all the world knows," said Mr.
Penny.  "Why, souls, what's the use o' the ancients spending scores
of pounds to build galleries if people down in the lowest depths of
the church sing like that at a moment's notice?"

"Really, I think we useless ones had better march out of church,
fiddles and all!" said Mr. Spinks, with a laugh which, to a
stranger, would have sounded mild and real.  Only the initiated body
of men he addressed could understand the horrible bitterness of
irony that lurked under the quiet words 'useless ones,' and the
ghastliness of the laughter apparently so natural.

"Never mind!  Let 'em sing too--'twill make it all the louder--hee,
hee!" said Leaf.

"Thomas Leaf, Thomas Leaf!  Where have you lived all your life?"
said grandfather William sternly.

The quailing Leaf tried to leek as if he had lived nowhere at all.

"When all's said and done, my sonnies," Reuben said, "there'd have
been no real harm in their singing if they had let nobody hear 'em,
and only jined in now and then."

"None at all," said Mr. Penny.  "But though I don't wish to accuse
people wrongfully, I'd say before my lord judge that I could hear
every note o' that last psalm come from 'em as much as from us--
every note as if 'twas their own."

"Know it! ah, I should think I did know it!"  Mr. Spinks was heard
to observe at this moment, without reference to his fellow players--
shaking his head at some idea he seemed to see floating before him,
and smiling as if he were attending a funeral at the time.  "Ah, do
I or don't I know it!"

No one said "Know what?" because all were aware from experience that
what he knew would declare itself in process of time.

"I could fancy last night that we should have some trouble wi' that
young man," said the tranter, pending the continuance of Spinks's
speech, and looking towards the unconscious Mr. Maybold in the
pulpit.

"_I_ fancy," said old William, rather severely, "I fancy there's too
much whispering going on to be of any spiritual use to gentle or
simple."  Then folding his lips and concentrating his glance on the
vicar, he implied that none but the ignorant would speak again; and
accordingly there was silence in the gallery, Mr. Spinks's telling
speech remaining for ever unspoken.

Dick had said nothing, and the tranter little, on this episode of
the morning; for Mrs. Dewy at breakfast expressed it as her
intention to invite the youthful leader of the culprits to the small
party it was customary with them to have on Christmas night--a piece
of knowledge which had given a particular brightness to Dick's
reflections since he had received it.  And in the tranter's
slightly-cynical nature, party feeling was weaker than in the other
members of the choir, though friendliness and faithful partnership
still sustained in him a hearty earnestness on their account.



CHAPTER VII:  THE TRANTER'S PARTY



During the afternoon unusual activity was seen to prevail about the
precincts of tranter Dewy's house.  The flagstone floor was swept of
dust, and a sprinkling of the finest yellow sand from the innermost
stratum of the adjoining sand-pit lightly scattered thereupon.  Then
were produced large knives and forks, which had been shrouded in
darkness and grease since the last occasion of the kind, and bearing
upon their sides, "Shear-steel, warranted," in such emphatic letters
of assurance, that the warranter's name was not required as further
proof, and not given.  The key was left in the tap of the cider-
barrel, instead of being carried in a pocket.  And finally the
tranter had to stand up in the room and let his wife wheel him round
like a turnstile, to see if anything discreditable was visible in
his appearance.

"Stand still till I've been for the scissors," said Mrs. Dewy.

The tranter stood as still as a sentinel at the challenge.

The only repairs necessary were a trimming of one or two whiskers
that had extended beyond the general contour of the mass; a like
trimming of a slightly-frayed edge visible on his shirt-collar; and
a final tug at a grey hair--to all of which operations he submitted
in resigned silence, except the last, which produced a mild "Come,
come, Ann," by way of expostulation.

"Really, Reuben, 'tis quite a disgrace to see such a man," said Mrs.
Dewy, with the severity justifiable in a long-tried companion,
giving him another turn round, and picking several of Smiler's hairs
from the shoulder of his coat.  Reuben's thoughts seemed engaged
elsewhere, and he yawned.  "And the cellar of your coat is a shame
to behold--so plastered with dirt, or dust, or grease, or something.
Why, wherever could you have got it?"

"'Tis my warm nater in summer-time, I suppose.  I always did get in
such a heat when I bustle about."

"Ay, the Dewys always were such a coarse-skinned family.  There's
your brother Bob just as bad--as fat as a porpoise--wi' his how,
mean, "How'st do, Ann?" whenever he meets me.  I'd "How'st do" him
indeed!  If the sun only shines out a minute, there be you all
streaming in the face--I never see!"

"If I be hot week-days, I must be hot Sundays."

"If any of the girls should turn after their father 'twill be a bad
look-out for 'em, poor things!  None of my family were sich vulgar
sweaters, not one of 'em.  But, Lord-a-mercy, the Dewys!  I don't
know how ever I cam' into such a family!"

"Your woman's weakness when I asked ye to jine us.  That's how it
was I suppose."  But the tranter appeared to have heard some such
words from his wife before, and hence his answer had not the energy
it might have shown if the inquiry had possessed the charm of
novelty.

"You never did hook so well in a pair o' trousers as in them," she
continued in the same unimpassioned voice, so that the unfriendly
criticism of the Dewy family seemed to have been mere normal than
spontaneous.  "Such a cheap pair as 'twas too.  As big as any man
could wish to have, and lined inside, and double-lined in the lower
parts, and an extra piece of stiffening at the bottom.  And 'tis a
nice high cut that comes up right under your armpits, and there's
enough turned down inside the seams to make half a pair more,
besides a piece of cloth heft that will make an honest waistcoat--
all by my contriving in buying the stuff at a bargain, and having it
made up under my eye.  It only shows what may be done by taking a
little trouble, and not going straight to the rascally tailors."

The discourse was cut short by the sudden appearance of Charley on
the scene, with a face and hands of hideous blackness, and a nose
like a guttering candle.  Why, on that particularly cleanly
afternoon, he should have discovered that the chimney-crook and
chain from which the hams were suspended should have possessed more
merits and general interest as playthings than any other articles in
the house, is a question for nursing mothers to decide.  However,
the humour seemed to lie in the result being, as has been seen, that
any given player with these articles was in the long-run daubed with
soot.  The last that was seen of Charley by daylight after this
piece of ingenuity was when in the act of vanishing from his
father's presence round the corner of the house--looking back over
his shoulder with an expression of great sin on his face, like Cain
as the Outcast in Bible pictures.


The guests had all assembled, and the tranter's party had reached
that degree of development which accords with ten o'clock P.M. in
rural assemblies.  At that hour the sound of a fiddle in process of
tuning was heard from the inner pantry.

"That's Dick," said the tranter.  "That lad's crazy for a jig."

"Dick!  Now I cannot--really, I cannot have any dancing at all till
Christmas-day is out," said old William emphatically.  "When the
clock ha' done striking twelve, dance as much as ye like."

"Well, I must say there's reason in that, William," said Mrs. Penny.
"If you do have a party on Christmas-night, 'tis only fair and
honourable to the sky-folk to have it a sit-still party.  Jigging
parties be all very well on the Devil's holidays; but a jigging
party looks suspicious now.  O yes; stop till the chock strikes,
young folk--so say I."

It happened that some warm mead accidentally got into Mr. Spinks's
head about this time.

"Dancing," he said, "is a most strengthening, livening, and courting
movement, 'specially with a little beverage added!  And dancing is
good.  But why disturb what is ordained, Richard and Reuben, and the
company zhinerally?  Why, I ask, as far as that do go?"

"Then nothing till after twelve," said William.

Though Reuben and his wife ruled on social points, religious
questions were mostly disposed of by the old man, whose firmness on
this head quite counterbalanced a certain weakness in his handling
of domestic matters.  The hopes of the younger members of the
household were therefore relegated to a distance of one hour and
three-quarters--a result that took visible shape in them by a remote
and listless look about the eyes--the singing of songs being
permitted in the interim.

At five minutes to twelve the soft tuning was again heard in the
back quarters; and when at length the clock had whizzed forth the
last stroke, Dick appeared ready primed, and the instruments were
boldly handled; old William very readily taking the bass-viol from
its accustomed nail, and touching the strings as irreligiously as
could be desired.

The country-dance called the 'Triumph, or Follow my Lover,' was the
figure with which they opened.  The tranter took for his partner
Mrs. Penny, and Mrs. Dewy was chosen by Mr. Penny, who made so much
of his limited height by a judicious carriage of the head,
straightening of the back, and important flashes of his spectacle-
glasses, that he seemed almost as tall as the tranter.  Mr. Shiner,
age about thirty-five, farmer and church-warden, a character
principally composed of a crimson stare, vigorous breath, and a
watch-chain, with a mouth hanging on a dark smile but never smiling,
had come quite willingly to the party, and showed a wondrous
obliviousness of all his antics on the previous night.  But the
comely, slender, prettily-dressed prize Fancy Day fell to Dick's
hot, in spite of some private machinations of the farmer, for the
reason that Mr. Shiner, as a richer man, had shown too much
assurance in asking the favour, whilst Dick had been duly courteous.

We gain a good view of our heroine as she advances to her place in
the ladies' line.  She belonged to the taller division of middle
height.  Flexibility was her first characteristic, by which she
appeared to enjoy the most easeful rest when she was in gliding
motion.  Her dark eyes--arched by brows of so keen, slender, and
soft a curve, that they resembled nothing so much as two slurs in
music--showed primarily a bright sparkle each.  This was softened by
a frequent thoughtfulness, yet not so frequent as to do away, for
more than a few minutes at a time, with a certain coquettishness;
which in its turn was never so decided as to banish honesty.  Her
lips imitated her brows in their clearly-cut outline and softness of
bend; and her nose was well shaped--which is saying a great deal,
when it is remembered that there are a hundred pretty mouths and
eyes for one pretty nose.  Add to this, plentiful knots of dark-
brown hair, a gauzy dress of white, with blue facings; and the
slightest idea may be gained of the young maiden who showed, amidst
the rest of the dancing-ladies, like a flower among vegetables.  And
so the dance proceeded.  Mr. Shiner, according to the interesting
rule laid down, deserted his own partner, and made off down the
middle with this fair one of Dick's--the pair appearing from the top
of the room like two persons tripping down a lane to be married.
Dick trotted behind with what was intended to be a look of
composure, but which was, in fact, a rather silly expression of
feature--implying, with too much earnestness, that such an elopement
could not be tolerated.  Then they turned and came back, when Dick
grew more rigid around his mouth, and blushed with ingenuous ardour
as he joined hands with the rival and formed the arch over his
lady's head; which presumably gave the figure its name;
relinquishing her again at setting to partners, when Mr. Shiner's
new chain quivered in every link, and all the loose flesh upon the
tranter--who here came into action again--shook like jelly.  Mrs.
Penny, being always rather concerned for her personal safety when
she danced with the tranter, fixed her face to a chronic smile of
timidity the whole time it hasted--a peculiarity which filled her
features with wrinkles, and reduced her eyes to little straight
lines like hyphens, as she jigged up and down opposite him;
repeating in her own person not only his proper movements, but also
the minor flourishes which the richness of the tranter's imagination
led him to introduce from time to time--an imitation which had about
it something of slavish obedience, not unmixed with fear.

The ear-rings of the ladies now flung themselves wildly about,
turning violent summersaults, banging this way and that, and then
swinging quietly against the ears sustaining them.  Mrs. Crumpler--a
heavy woman, who, for some reason which nobody ever thought worth
inquiry, danced in a clean apron--moved so smoothly through the
figure that her feet were never seen; conveying to imaginative minds
the idea that she rolled on castors.

Minute after minute glided by, and the party reached the period when
ladies' back-hair begins to look forgotten and dissipated; when a
perceptible dampness makes itself apparent upon the faces even of
delicate girls--a ghastly dew having for some time rained from the
features of their masculine partners; when skirts begin to be torn
out of their gathers; when elderly people, who have stood up to
please their juniors, begin to feel sundry small tremblings in the
region of the knees, and to wish the interminable dance was at
Jericho; when (at country parties of the thorough sort)waistcoats
begin to be unbuttoned, and when the fiddlers' chairs have been
wriggled, by the frantic bowing of their occupiers, to a distance of
about two feet from where they originally stood.

Fancy was dancing with Mr. Shiner.  Dick knew that Fancy, by the law
of good manners, was bound to dance as pleasantly with one partner
as with another; yet he could not help suggesting to himself that
she need not have put QUITE so much spirit into her steps, nor
smiled QUITE so frequently whilst in the farmer's hands.

"I'm afraid you didn't cast off," said Dick mildly to Mr. Shiner,
before the latter man's watch-chain had done vibrating from a recent
whirl.

Fancy made a motion of accepting the correction; but her partner
took no notice, and proceeded with the next movement, with an
affectionate bend towards her.

"That Shiner's too fond of her," the young man said to himself as he
watched them.  They came to the top again, Fancy smiling warmly
towards her partner, and went to their places.

"Mr. Shiner, you didn't cast off," said Dick, for want of something
else to demolish him with; casting off himself, and being put out at
the farmer's irregularity.

"Perhaps I sha'n't cast off for any man," said Mr. Shiner.

"I think you ought to, sir."

Dick's partner, a young lady of the name of Lizzy--called Lizz for
short--tried to mollify.

"I can't say that I myself have much feeling for casting off," she
said.

"Nor I," said Mrs. Penny, following up the argument, "especially if
a friend and neighbour is set against it.  Not but that 'tis a
terrible tasty thing in good hands and well done; yes, indeed, so
say I."

"All I meant was," said Dick, rather sorry that he had spoken
correctingly to a guest, "that 'tis in the dance; and a man has
hardly any right to hack and mangle what was ordained by the regular
dance-maker, who, I daresay, got his living by making 'em, and
thought of nothing else all his life."

"I don't like casting off:  then very well; I cast off for no dance-
maker that ever lived."

Dick now appeared to be doing mental arithmetic, the act being
really an effort to present to himself, in an abstract form, how far
an argument with a formidable rival ought to be carried, when that
rival was his mother's guest.  The dead-lock was put an end to by
the stamping arrival up the middle of the tranter, who, despising
minutiae on principle, started a theme of his own.

"I assure you, neighbours," he said, "the heat of my frame no tongue
can tell!"  He looked around and endeavoured to give, by a forcible
gaze of self-sympathy, some faint idea of the truth.

Mrs. Dewy formed one of the next couple.

"Yes," she said, in an auxiliary tone, "Reuben always was such a hot
man."

Mrs. Penny implied the species of sympathy that such a class of
affliction required, by trying to smile and to look grieved at the
same time.

"If he only walk round the garden of a Sunday morning, his shirt-
collar is as limp as no starch at all," continued Mrs. Dewy, her
countenance lapsing parenthetically into a housewifely expression of
concern at the reminiscence.

"Come, come, you women-folk; 'tis hands across--come, come!" said
the tranter; and the conversation ceased for the present.



CHAPTER VIII:  THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY



Dick had at length secured Fancy for that most delightful of
country-dances, opening with six-hands-round.

"Before we begin," said the tranter, "my proposal is, that 'twould
be a right and proper plan for every mortal man in the dance to pull
off his jacket, considering the heat."

"Such low notions as you have, Reuben!  Nothing but strip will go
down with you when you are a-dancing.  Such a hot man as he is!"

"Well, now, look here, my sonnies," he argued to his wife, whom he
often addressed in the plural masculine for economy of epithet
merely; "I don't see that.  You dance and get hot as fire; therefore
you lighten your clothes.  Isn't that nature and reason for gentle
and simple?  If I strip by myself and not necessary, 'tis rather
pot-housey I own; but if we stout chaps strip one and all, why, 'tis
the native manners of the country, which no man can gainsay?  Hey--
what did you say, my sonnies?"

"Strip we will!" said the three other heavy men who were in the
dance; and their coats were accordingly taken off and hung in the
passage, whence the four sufferers from heat soon reappeared,
marching in close column, with flapping shirt-sleeves, and having,
as common to them all, a general glance of being now a match for any
man or dancer in England or Ireland.  Dick, fearing to lose ground
in Fancy's good opinion, retained his coat like the rest of the
thinner men; and Mr. Shiner did the same from superior knowledge.

And now a further phase of revelry had disclosed itself.  It was the
time of night when a guest may write his name in the dust upon the
tables and chairs, and a bluish mist pervades the atmosphere,
becoming a distinct halo round the candles; when people's nostrils,
wrinkles, and crevices in general, seem to be getting gradually
plastered up; when the very fiddlers as well as the dancers get red
in the face, the dancers having advanced further still towards
incandescence, and entered the cadaverous phase; the fiddlers no
longer sit down, but kick back their chairs and saw madly at the
strings, with legs firmly spread and eyes closed, regardless of the
visible world.  Again and again did Dick share his Love's hand with
another man, and wheel round; then, more delightfully, promenade in
a circle with her all to himself, his arm holding her waist more
firmly each time, and his elbow getting further and further behind
her back, till the distance reached was rather noticeable; and, most
blissful, swinging to places shoulder to shoulder, her breath
curling round his neck like a summer zephyr that had strayed from
its proper date.  Threading the couples one by one they reached the
bottom, when there arose in Dick's mind a minor misery lest the tune
should end before they could work their way to the top again, and
have anew the same exciting run down through.  Dick's feelings on
actually reaching the top in spite of his doubts were supplemented
by a mortal fear that the fiddling might even stop at this supreme
moment; which prompted him to convey a stealthy whisper to the far-
gone musicians, to the effect that they were not to leave off till
he and his partner had reached the bottom of the dance once more,
which remark was replied to by the nearest of those convulsed and
quivering men by a private nod to the anxious young man between two
semiquavers of the tune, and a simultaneous "All right, ay, ay,"
without opening the eyes.  Fancy was now held so closely that Dick
and she were practically one person.  The room became to Dick like a
picture in a dream; all that he could remember of it afterwards
being the look of the fiddlers going to sleep, as humming-tops
sleep, by increasing their motion and hum, together with the figures
of grandfather James and old Simon Crumpler sitting by the chimney-
corner, talking and nodding in dumb-show, and beating the air to
their emphatic sentences like people near a threshing machine.

The dance ended.  "Piph-h-h-h!" said tranter Dewy, blowing out his
breath in the very finest stream of vapour that a man's lips could
form.  "A regular tightener, that one, sonnies!"  He wiped his
forehead, and went to the cider and ale mugs on the table.

"Well!" said Mrs. Penny, flopping into a chair, "my heart haven't
been in such a thumping state of uproar since I used to sit up on
old Midsummer-eves to see who my husband was going to be."

"And that's getting on for a good few years ago now, from what I've
heard you tell," said the tranter, without lifting his eyes from the
cup he was filling.  Being now engaged in the business of handing
round refreshments, he was warranted in keeping his coat off still,
though the other heavy men had resumed theirs.

"And a thing I never expected would come to pass, if you'll believe
me, came to pass then," continued Mrs. Penny.  "Ah, the first spirit
ever I see on a Midsummer-eve was a puzzle to me when he appeared, a
hard puzzle, so say I!"

"So I should have fancied," said Elias Spinks.

"Yes," said Mrs. Penny, throwing her glance into past times, and
talking on in a running tone of complacent abstraction, as if a
listener were not a necessity.  "Yes; never was I in such a taking
as on that Midsummer-eve!  I sat up, quite determined to see if John
Wildway was going to marry me or no.  I put the bread-and-cheese and
beer quite ready, as the witch's book ordered, and I opened the
door, and I waited till the clock struck twelve, my nerves all alive
and so strained that I could feel every one of 'em twitching like
bell-wires.  Yes, sure! and when the clock had struck, ho and
behold, I could see through the door a LITTLE SMALL man in the lane
wi' a shoemaker's apron on."

Here Mr. Penny stealthily enlarged himself half an inch.

"Now, John Wildway," Mrs. Penny continued, "who courted me at that
time, was a shoemaker, you see, but he was a very fair-sized man,
and I couldn't believe that any such a little small man had anything
to do wi' me, as anybody might.  But on he came, and crossed the
threshold--not John, but actually the same little small man in the
shoemaker's apron--"

"You needn't be so mighty particular about little and small!" said
her husband.

"In he walks, and down he sits, and O my goodness me, didn't I flee
upstairs, body and soul hardly hanging together!  Well, to cut a
long story short, by-long and by-late.  John Wildway and I had a
miff and parted; and lo and behold, the coming man came!  Penny
asked me if I'd go snacks with him, and afore I knew what I was
about a'most, the thing was done."

"I've fancied you never knew better in your life; but I mid be
mistaken," said Mr. Penny in a murmur.

After Mrs. Penny had spoken, there being no new occupation for her
eyes, she still let them stay idling on the past scenes just
related, which were apparently visible to her in the centre of the
room Mr. Penny's remark received no reply.

During this discourse the tranter and his wife might have been
observed standing in an unobtrusive corner, in mysterious closeness
to each other, a just perceptible current of intelligence passing
from each to each, which had apparently no relation whatever to the
conversation of their guests, but much to their sustenance.  A
conclusion of some kind having at length been drawn, the palpable
confederacy of man and wife was once more obliterated, the tranter
marching off into the pantry, humming a tune that he couldn't quite
recollect, and then breaking into the words of a song of which he
could remember about one line and a quarter.  Mrs. Dewy spoke a few
words about preparations for a bit of supper.

That elder portion of the company which loved eating and drinking
put on a look to signify that till this moment they had quite
forgotten that it was customary to expect suppers on these
occasions; going even further than this politeness of feature, and
starting irrelevant subjects, the exceeding flatness and forced tone
of which rather betrayed their object.  The younger members said
they were quite hungry, and that supper would be delightful though
it was so late.

Good luck attended Dick's love-passes during the meal.  He sat next
Fancy, and had the thrilling pleasure of using permanently a glass
which had been taken by Fancy in mistake; of letting the outer edge
of the sole of his boot touch the lower verge of her skirt; and to
add to these delights the cat, which had lain unobserved in her hap
for several minutes, crept across into his own, touching him with
fur that had touched her hand a moment before.  There were, besides,
some little pleasures in the shape of helping her to vegetable she
didn't want, and when it had nearly alighted on her plate taking it
across for his own use, on the plea of waste not, want not.  He
also, from time to time, sipped sweet sly glances at her profile;
noticing the set of her head, the curve of her throat, and other
artistic properties of the lively goddess, who the while kept up a
rather free, not to say too free, conversation with Mr. Shiner
sitting opposite; which, after some uneasy criticism, and much
shifting of argument backwards and forwards in Dick's mind, he
decided not to consider of alarming significance.

"A new music greets our ears now," said Miss Fancy, alluding, with
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 chock 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 sheep 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 borne, 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
pheasant 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 hips 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; hut 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!"

"No, no.  But he called, and she looked at him in such a way, and at
me in such a way--quite different the ways were,--and as I was
coming off, there was he hanging up her birdcage."

"Well, why shouldn't the man hang up her bird-cage?  Turk seize it
all, what's that got to do wi' it?  Dick, that thou beest a white-
lyvered chap I don't say, but if thou beestn't as mad as a cappel-
faced bull, let me smile no more."

"O, ay."

"And what's think now, Dick?"

"I don't know."

"Here's another pretty kettle o' fish for thee.  Who d'ye think's
the bitter weed in our being turned out?  Did our party tell 'ee?"

"No.  Why, Pa'son Maybold, I suppose."

"Shiner,--because he's in love with thy young woman, and d'want to
see her young figure sitting up at that queer instrument, and her
young fingers rum-strumming upon the keys."

A sharp ado of sweet and bitter was going on in Dick during this
communication from his father.  "Shiner's a fool!--no, that's not
it; I don't believe any such thing, father.  Why, Shiner would never
take a bold step like that, unless she'd been a little made up to,
and had taken it kindly.  Pooh!"

"Who's to say she didn't?"

"I do."

"The more fool you."

"Why, father of me?"

"Has she ever done more to thee?"

"No."

"Then she has done as much to he--rot 'em!  Now, Dick, this is how a
maid is.  She'll swear she's dying for thee, and she is dying for
thee, and she will die for thee; but she'll fling a look over
t'other shoulder at another young feller, though never leaving off
dying for thee just the same."

"She's not dying for me, and so she didn't fling a look at him."

"But she may be dying for him, for she looked at thee."

"I don't know what to make of it at all," said Dick gloomily.

"All I can make of it is," the tranter said, raising his whip,
arranging his different joints and muscles, and motioning to the
horse to move on, "that if you can't read a maid's mind by her
motions, nature d'seem to say thou'st ought to be a bachelor.  Clk,
clk!  Smiler!"  And the tranter moved on.

Dick held Smart's rein firmly, and the whole concern of horse, cart,
and man remained rooted in the lane.  Hew long this condition would
have lasted is unknown, had not Dick's thoughts, after adding up
numerous items of misery, gradually wandered round to the fact that
as something must be done, it could not be done by staying there all
night.

Reaching home he went up to his bedroom, shut the door as if he were
going to be seen no more in this life, and taking a sheet of paper
and uncorking the ink-bottle, he began a letter.  The dignity of the
writer's mind was so powerfully apparent in every line of this
effusion that it obscured the logical sequence of facts and
intentions to an appreciable degree; and it was not at all clear to
a reader whether he there and then left off loving Miss Fancy Day;
whether he had never loved her seriously, and never meant to;
whether he had been dying up to the present moment, and now intended
to get well again; or whether he had hitherto been in good health,
and intended to die for her forthwith.

He put this letter in an envelope, sealed it up, directed it in a
stern handwriting of straight dashes--easy flourishes being
rigorously excluded.  He walked with it in his pocket down the lane
in strides not an inch less than three feet long.  Reaching her gate
he put on a resolute expression--then put it off again, turned back
homeward, tore up his letter, and sat down.

That letter was altogether in a wrong tone--that he must own.  A
heartless man-of-the-world tone was what the juncture required.
That he rather wanted her, and rather did not want her--the latter
for choice; hut that as a member of society he didn't mind making a
query in jaunty terms, which could only be answered in the same way:
did she mean anything by her bearing towards him, or did she not?

This letter was considered so satisfactory in every way that, being
put into the hands of a little boy, and the order given that he was
to run with it to the school, he was told in addition not to look
behind him if Dick called after him to bring it hack, but to run
along with it just the same.  Having taken this precaution against
vacillation, Dick watched his messenger down the road, and turned
into the house whistling an air in such ghastly jerks and starts,
that whistling seemed to be the act the very furthest removed from
that which was instinctive in such a youth.

The letter was left as ordered:  the next morning came and passed--
and no answer.  The next.  The next.  Friday night came.  Dick
resolved that if no answer or sign were given by her the next day,
on Sunday he would meet her face to face, and have it all out by
word of mouth.

"Dick," said his father, coming in from the garden at that moment--
in each hand a hive of bees tied in a cloth to prevent their egress-
-"I think you'd better take these two swarms of bees to Mrs.
Maybold's to-morrow, instead o' me, and I'll go wi' Smiler and the
wagon."

It was a relief; for Mrs. Maybold, the vicar's mother, who had just
taken into her head a fancy for keeping bees (pleasantly disguised
under the pretence of its being an economical wish to produce her
own honey), lived near the watering-place of Budmouth-Regis, ten
miles off, and the business of transporting the hives thither would
occupy the whole day, and to some extent annihilate the vacant time
between this evening and the coming Sunday.  The best spring-cart
was washed throughout, the axles oiled, and the bees placed therein
for the journey.




PART THE THIRD--SUMMER




CHAPTER I:  DRIVING OUT OF BUDMOUTH



An easy bend of neck and graceful set of head; full and wavy bundles
of dark-brown hair; light fall of little feet; pretty devices on the
skirt of the dress; clear deep eyes; in short, a bunch of sweets:
it was Fancy!  Dick's heart went round to her with a rush.

The scene was the corner of Mary Street in Budmouth-Regis, near the
King's statue, at which point the white angle of the last house in
the row cut perpendicularly an embayed and nearly motionless expanse
of salt water projected from the outer ocean--to-day lit in bright
tones of green and opal.  Dick and Smart had just emerged from the
street, and there on the right, against the brilliant sheet of
liquid colour, stood Fancy Day; and she turned and recognized him.

Dick suspended his thoughts of the letter and wonder at how she came
there by driving close to the chains of the Esplanade--incontinently
displacing two chairmen, who had just come to life for the summer in
new clean shirts and revivified clothes, and being almost displaced
in turn by a rigid boy rattling along with a baker's cart, and
looking neither to the right nor the left.  He asked if she were
going to Mellstock that night.

"Yes, I'm waiting for the carrier," she replied, seeming, too, to
suspend thoughts of the letter.

"Now I can drive you home nicely, and you save half an hour.  Will
ye come with me?"

As Fancy's power to will anything seemed to have departed in some
mysterious manner at that moment, Dick settled the matter by getting
out and assisting her into the vehicle without another word.

The temporary flush upon her cheek changed to a lesser hue, which
was permanent, and at length their eyes met; there was present
between them a certain feeling of embarrassment, which arises at
such moments when all the instinctive acts dictated by the position
have been performed.  Dick, being engaged with the reins, thought
less of this awkwardness than did Fancy, who had nothing to do but
to feel his presence, and to be more and more conscious of the fact,
that by accepting a seat beside him in this way she succumbed to the
tone of his note.  Smart jogged along, and Dick jogged, and the
helpless Fancy necessarily jogged, too; and she felt that she was in
a measure capture I and made a prisoner.

"I am so much obliged to you for your company, Miss Day," he
observed, as they drove past the two semicircular bays of the Old
Royal Hotel, where His Majesty King George the Third had many a time
attended the balls of the burgesses.

To Miss Day, crediting him with the same consciousness of mastery--a
consciousness of which he was perfectly innocent--this remark
sounded like a magnanimous intention to soothe her, the captive.

"I didn't come for the pleasure of obliging you with my company,"
she said.

The answer had an unexpected manner of incivility in it that must
have been rather surprising to young Dewy.  At the same time it may
be observed, that when a young woman returns a rude answer to a
young man's civil remark, her heart is in a state which argues
rather hopefully for his case than otherwise.

There was silence between them till they had left the sea-front and
passed about twenty of the trees that ornamented the road leading up
out of the town towards Casterbridge and Mellstock.

"Though I didn't come for that purpose either, I would have done
it," said Dick at the twenty-first tree.

"Now, Mr. Dewy, no flirtation, because it's wrong, and I don't wish
it."

Dick seated himself afresh just as he had been sitting before,
arranged his looks very emphatically, and cleared his throat.

"Really, anybody would think you had met me on business and were
just going to commence," said the lady intractably.

"Yes, they would."

"Why, you never have, to be sure!"

This was a shaky beginning.  He chopped round, and said cheerily, as
a man who had resolved never to spoil his jollity by loving one of
womankind--"Well, how are you getting on, Miss Day, at the present
time?  Gaily, I don't doubt for a moment."

"I am not gay, Dick; you know that."

"Gaily doesn't mean decked in gay dresses."

"I didn't suppose gaily was gaily dressed.  Mighty me, what a
scholar you've grown!"

"Lots of things have happened to you this spring, I see."

"What have you seen?"

"O, nothing; I've heard, I mean!"

"What have you heard?"

"The name of a pretty man, with brass studs and a copper ring and a
tin watch-chain, a little mixed up with your own.  That's all."

"That's a very unkind picture of Mr. Shiner, for that's who you
mean!  The studs are gold, as you know, and it's a real silver
chain; the ring I can't conscientiously defend, and he only wore it
once."

"He might have worn it a hundred times without showing it half so
much."

"Well, he's nothing to me," she serenely observed.

"Not any more than I am?"

"Now, Mr. Dewy," said Fancy severely, "certainly he isn't any more
to me than you are!"

"Not so much?"

She looked aside to consider the precise compass of that question.
"That I can't exactly answer," she replied with soft archness.

As they were going rather slowly, another spring-cart, containing a
farmer, farmer's wife, and farmer's man, jogged past them; and the
farmer's wife and farmer's man eyed the couple very curiously.  The
farmer never looked up from the horse's tail.

"Why can't you exactly answer?" said Dick, quickening Smart a
little, and jogging on just behind the farmer and farmer's wife and
man.

As no answer came, and as their eyes had nothing else to do, they
both contemplated the picture presented in front, and noticed how
the farmer's wife sat flattened between the two men, who bulged over
each end of the seat to give her room, till they almost sat upon
their respective wheels; and they looked too at the farmer's wife's
silk mantle, inflating itself between her shoulders like a balloon
and sinking flat again, at each jog of the horse.  The farmer's
wife, feeling their eyes sticking into her back, looked over her
shoulder.  Dick dropped ten yards further behind.

"Fancy, why can't you answer?" he repeated.

"Because how much you are to me depends upon how much I am to you,"
said she in low tones.

"Everything," said Dick, putting his hand towards hers, and casting
emphatic eyes upon the upper curve of her cheek.

"Now, Richard Dewy, no touching me!  I didn't say in what way your
thinking of me affected the question--perhaps inversely, don't you
see?  No touching, sir!  Look; goodness me, don't, Dick!"

The cause of her sudden start was the unpleasant appearance over
Dick's right shoulder of an empty timber-wagon and four journeymen-
carpenters reclining in lazy postures inside it, their eyes directed
upwards at various oblique angles into the surrounding world, the
chief object of their existence being apparently to criticize to the
very backbone and marrow every animate object that came within the
compass of their vision.  This difficulty of Dick's was overcome by
trotting on till the wagon and carpenters were beginning to look
rather misty by reason of a film of dust that accompanied their
wagon-wheels, and rose around their heads like a fog.

"Say you love me, Fancy."

"No, Dick, certainly not; 'tisn't time to do that yet."

"Why, Fancy?"

"'Miss Day' is better at present--don't mind my saying so; and I
ought not to have called you Dick."

"Nonsense! when you know that I would do anything on earth for your
love.  Why, you make any one think that loving is a thing that can
be done and undone, and put on and put off at a mere whim."

"No, no, I don't," she said gently; "but there are things which tell
me I ought not to give way to much thinking about you, even if--"

"But you want to, don't you?  Yes, say you do; it is best to be
truthful.  Whatever they may say about a woman's right to conceal
where her love lies, and pretend it doesn't exist, and things like
that, it is not best; I do know it, Fancy.  And an honest woman in
that, as well as in all her daily concerns, shines most brightly,
and is thought most of in the long-run."

"Well then, perhaps, Dick, I do love you a little," she whispered
tenderly; "but I wish you wouldn't say any more now."

"I won't say any more now, then, if you don't like it, dear.  But
you do love me a little, don't you?"

"Now you ought not to want me to keep saying things twice; I can't
say any more now, and you must be content with what you have."

"I may at any rate call you Fancy?  There's no harm in that."

"Yes, you may."

"And you'll not call me Mr. Dewy any more?"

"Very well."



CHAPTER II:  FURTHER ALONG THE ROAD



Dick's spirits having risen in the course of these admissions of his
sweetheart, he now touched Smart with the whip; and on Smart's neck,
not far behind his ears.  Smart, who had been lost in thought for
some time, never dreaming that Dick could reach so far with a whip
which, on this particular journey, had never been extended further
than his flank, tossed his head, and scampered along with exceeding
briskness, which was very pleasant to the young couple behind him
till, turning a bend in the road, they came instantly upon the
farmer, farmer's man, and farmer's wife with the flapping mantle,
all jogging on just the same as ever.

"Bother those people!  Here we are upon them again."

"Well, of course.  They have as much right to the road as we."

"Yes, but it is provoking to be overlooked so.  I like a road all to
myself.  Look what a lumbering affair theirs is!"  The wheels of the
farmer's cart, just at that moment, jogged into a depression running
across the road, giving the cart a twist, whereupon all three nodded
to the left, and on coming out of it all three nodded to the right,
and went on jerking their backs in and out as usual.  "We'll pass
them when the road gets wider."

When an opportunity seemed to offer itself for carrying this
intention into effect, they heard light flying wheels behind, and on
their quartering there whizzed along past them a brand-new gig, so
brightly polished that the spokes of the wheels sent forth a
continual quivering light at one point in their circle, and all the
panels glared like mirrors in Dick and Fancy's eyes.  The driver,
and owner as it appeared, was really a handsome man; his companion
was Shiner.  Both turned round as they passed Dick and Fancy, and
stared with bold admiration in her face till they were obliged to
attend to the operation of passing the farmer.  Dick glanced for an
instant at Fancy while she was undergoing their scrutiny; then
returned to his driving with rather a sad countenance.

"Why are you so silent?" she said, after a while, with real concern.

"Nothing."

"Yes, it is, Dick.  I couldn't help those people passing."

"I know that."

"You look offended with me.  What have I done?"

"I can't tell without offending you."

"Better out."

"Well," said Dick, who seemed longing to tell, even at the risk of
offending her, "I was thinking how different you in love are from me
in love.  Whilst those men were staring, you dismissed me from your
thoughts altogether, and--"

"You can't offend me further now; tell all!"

"And showed upon your face a pleased sense of being attractive to
'em."

"Don't be silly, Dick!  You know very well I didn't."

Dick shook his head sceptically, and smiled.

"Dick, I always believe flattery IF POSSIBLE--and it was possible
then.  Now there's an open confession of weakness.  But I showed no
consciousness of it."

Dick, perceiving by her look that she would adhere to her statement,
charitably forbore saying anything that could make her prevaricate.
The sight of Shiner, too, had recalled another branch of the subject
to his mind; that which had been his greatest trouble till her
company and words had obscured its probability.

"By the way, Fancy, do you know why our quire is to be dismissed?"

"No:  except that it is Mr. Maybold's wish for me to play the
organ."

"Do you know how it came to be his wish?"

"That I don't."

"Mr. Shiner, being churchwarden, has persuaded the vicar; who,
however, was willing enough before.  Shiner, I know, is crazy to see
you playing every Sunday; I suppose he'll turn over your music, for
the organ will be close to his pew.  But--I know you have never
encouraged him?"

"Never once!" said Fancy emphatically, and with eyes full of earnest
truth.  "I don't like him indeed, and I never heard of his doing
this before!  I have always felt that I should like to play in a
church, but I never wished to turn you and your choir out; and I
never even said that I could play till I was asked.  You don't think
for a moment that I did, surely, do you?"

"I know you didn't, dear."

"Or that I care the least morsel of a bit for him?"

"I know you don't."

The distance between Budmouth and Mellstock was ten or eleven miles,
and there being a good inn, "The Ship," four miles out of Budmouth,
with a mast and cross-trees in front, Dick's custom in driving
thither was to divide the journey into three stages by resting at
this inn going and coming, and not troubling the Budmouth stables at
all, whenever his visit to the town was a mere call and deposit, as
to-day.

Fancy was ushered into a little tea-room, and Dick went to the
stables to see to the feeding of Smart.  In face of the significant
twitches of feature that were visible in the ostler and labouring
men idling around, Dick endeavoured to look unconscious of the fact
that there was any sentiment between him and Fancy beyond a
tranter's desire to carry a passenger home.  He presently entered
the inn and opened the door of Fancy's room.

"Dick, do you know, it has struck me that it is rather awkward, my
being here alone with you like this.  I don't think you had better
come in with me."

"That's rather unpleasant, dear."

"Yes, it is, and I wanted you to have some tea as well as myself
too, because you must be tired."

"Well, let me have some with you, then.  I was denied once before,
if you recollect, Fancy."

"Yes, yes, never mind!  And it seems unfriendly of me now, but I
don't know what to do."

"It shall be as you say, then."  Dick began to retreat with a
dissatisfied wrinkling of face, and a farewell glance at the cosy
tea-tray.

"But you don't see how it is, Dick, when you speak like that," she
said, with more earnestness than she had ever shown before.  "You do
know, that even if I care very much for you, I must remember that I
have a difficult position to maintain.  The vicar would not like me,
as his schoolmistress, to indulge in a tete-a-tete anywhere with
anybody."

"But I am not ANY body!" exclaimed Dick.

"No, no, I mean with a young man;" and she added softly, "unless I
were really engaged to be married to him."

"Is that all?  Then, dearest, dearest, why we'll be engaged at once,
to be sure we will, and down I sit!  There it is, as easy as a
glove!"

"Ah! but suppose I won't!  And, goodness me, what have I done!" she
faltered, getting very red.  "Positively, it seems as if I meant you
to say that!"

"Let's do it!  I mean get engaged," said Dick.  "Now, Fancy, will
you be my wife?"

"Do you know, Dick, it was rather unkind of you to say what you did
coming along the road," she remarked, as if she had not heard the
latter part of his speech; though an acute observer might have
noticed about her breast, as the word 'wife' fell from Dick's lips,
a soft silent escape of breaths, with very short rests between each.

"What did I say?"

"About my trying to look attractive to those men in the gig."

"You couldn't help looking so, whether you tried or no.  And, Fancy,
you do care for me?"

"Yes."

"Very much?"

"Yes."

"And you'll be my own wife?"

Her heart quickened, adding to and withdrawing from her cheek
varying tones of red to match each varying thought.  Dick looked
expectantly at the ripe tint of her delicate mouth, waiting for what
was coming forth.

"Yes--if father will let me."

Dick drew himself close to her, compressing his lips and pouting
them out, as if he were about to whistle the softest melody known.

"O no!" said Fancy solemnly.

The modest Dick drew back a little.

"Dick, Dick, kiss me and let me go instantly!--here's somebody
coming!" she whisperingly exclaimed.

* * *

Half an hour afterwards Dick emerged from the inn, and if Fancy's
lips had been real cherries probably Dick's would have appeared
deeply stained.  The landlord was standing in the yard.

"Heu-heu! hay-hay, Master Dewy!  Ho-ho!" he laughed, letting the
laugh slip out gently and by degrees that it might make little noise
in its exit, and smiting Dick under the fifth rib at the same time.
"This will never do, upon my life, Master Dewy! calling for tay for
a feymel passenger, and then going in and sitting down and having
some too, and biding such a fine long time!"

"But surely you know?" said Dick, with great apparent surprise.
"Yes, yes!  Ha-ha!" smiting the landlord under the ribs in return.

"Why, what?  Yes, yes; ha-ha!"

"You know, of course!"

"Yes, of course!  But--that is--I don't."

"Why about--between that young lady and me?" nodding to the window
of the room that Fancy occupied.

"No; not I!" said the innkeeper, bringing his eyes into circles.

"And you don't!"

"Not a word, I'll take my oath!"

"But you laughed when I laughed."

"Ay, that was me sympathy; so did you when I laughed!"

"Really, you don't know?  Goodness--not knowing that!"

"I'll take my oath I don't!"

"O yes," said Dick, with frigid rhetoric of pitying astonishment,
"we're engaged to be married, you see, and I naturally look after
her."

"Of course, of course!  I didn't know that, and I hope ye'll excuse
any little freedom of mine, Mr. Dewy.  But it is a very odd thing; I
was talking to your father very intimate about family matters only
last Friday in the world, and who should come in but Keeper Day, and
we all then fell a-talking o' family matters; but neither one o'
them said a mortal word about it; knowen me too so many years, and I
at your father's own wedding.  'Tisn't what I should have expected
from an old neighbour!"

"Well, to say the truth, we hadn't told father of the engagement at
that time; in fact, 'twasn't settled."

"Ah! the business was done Sunday.  Yes, yes, Sunday's the courting
day.  Heu-heu!"

"No, 'twasn't done Sunday in particular."

"After school-hours this week?  Well, a very good time, a very
proper good time."

"O no, 'twasn't done then."

"Coming along the road to-day then, I suppose?"

"Not at all; I wouldn't think of getting engaged in a dog-cart."

"Dammy--might as well have said at once, the WHEN be blowed!
Anyhow, 'tis a fine day, and I hope next time you'll come as one."

Fancy was duly brought out and assisted into the vehicle, and the
newly affianced youth and maiden passed up the steep hill to the
Ridgeway, and vanished in the direction of Mellstock.



CHAPTER III:  A CONFESSION



It was a morning of the latter summer-time; a morning of lingering
dews, when the grass is never dry in the shade.  Fuchsias and
dahlias were laden till eleven o'clock with small drops and dashes
of water, changing the colour of their sparkle at every movement of
the air; and elsewhere hanging on twigs like small silver fruit.
The threads of garden spiders appeared thick and polished.  In the
dry and sunny places, dozens of long-legged crane-flies whizzed off
the grass at every step the passer took.

Fancy Day and her friend Susan Dewy the tranter's daughter, were in
such a spot as this, pulling down a bough laden with early apples.
Three months had elapsed since Dick and Fancy had journeyed together
from Budmouth, and the course of their love had run on vigorously
during the whole time.  There had been just enough difficulty
attending its development, and just enough finesse required in
keeping it private, to lend the passion an ever-increasing freshness
on Fancy's part, whilst, whether from these accessories or not,
Dick's heart had been at all times as fond as could be desired.  But
there was a cloud on Fancy's horizon now.

"She is so well off--better than any of us," Susan Dewy was saying.
"Her father farms five hundred acres, and she might marry a doctor
or curate or anything of that kind if she contrived a little."

"I don't think Dick ought to have gone to that gipsy-party at all
when he knew I couldn't go," replied Fancy uneasily.

"He didn't know that you would not be there till it was too late to
refuse the invitation," said Susan.

"And what was she like?  Tell me."

"Well, she was rather pretty, I must own."

"Tell straight on about her, can't you!  Come, do, Susan.  How many
times did you say he danced with her?"

"Once."

"Twice, I think you said?"

"Indeed I'm sure I didn't."

"Well, and he wanted to again, I expect."

"No; I don't think he did.  She wanted to dance with him again bad
enough, I know.  Everybody does with Dick, because he's so handsome
and such a clever courter."

"O, I wish!--How did you say she wore her hair?"

"In long curls,--and her hair is light, and it curls without being
put in paper:  that's how it is she's so attractive."

"She's trying to get him away! yes, yes, she is!  And through
keeping this miserable school I mustn't wear my hair in curls!  But
I will; I don't care if I leave the school and go home, I will wear
my curls!  Look, Susan, do! is her hair as soft and long as this?"
Fancy pulled from its coil under her hat a twine of her own hair,
and stretched it down her shoulder to show its length, looking at
Susan to catch her opinion from her eyes.

"It is about the same length as that, I think," said Miss Dewy.

Fancy paused hopelessly.  "I wish mine was lighter, like hers!" she
continued mournfully.  "But hers isn't so soft, is it?  Tell me,
now."

"I don't know."

Fancy abstractedly extended her vision to survey a yellow butterfly
and a red-and-black butterfly that were flitting along in company,
and then became aware that Dick was advancing up the garden.

"Susan, here's Dick coming; I suppose that's because we've been
talking about him."

"Well, then, I shall go indoors now--you won't want me;" and Susan
turned practically and walked off.

Enter the single-minded Dick, whose only fault at the gipsying, or
picnic, had been that of loving Fancy too exclusively, and depriving
himself of the innocent pleasure the gathering might have afforded
him, by sighing regretfully at her absence,--who had danced with the
rival in sheer despair of ever being able to get through that stale,
flat, and unprofitable afternoon in any other way; but this she
would not believe.

Fancy had settled her plan of emotion.  To reproach Dick?  O no, no.
"I am in great trouble," said she, taking what was intended to be a
hopelessly melancholy survey of a few small apples lying under the
tree; yet a critical ear might have noticed in her voice a tentative
tone as to the effect of the words upon Dick when she uttered them.

"What are you in trouble about?  Tell me of it," said Dick
earnestly.  "Darling, I will share it with 'ee and help 'ee."

"No, no:  you can't!  Nobody can!"

"Why not?  You don't deserve it, whatever it is.  Tell me, dear."

"O, it isn't what you think!  It is dreadful:  my own sin!"

"Sin, Fancy! as if you could sin!  I know it can't be."

"'Tis, 'tis!" said the young lady, in a pretty little frenzy of
sorrow.  "I have done wrong, and I don't like to tell it!  Nobody
will forgive me, nobody! and you above all will not! . . . I have
allowed myself to--to--fl--"

"What,--not flirt!" he said, controlling his emotion as it were by a
sudden pressure inward from his surface.  "And you said only the day
before yesterday that you hadn't flirted in your life!"

"Yes, I did; and that was a wicked story!  I have let another love
me, and--"

"Good G--!  Well, I'll forgive you,--yes, if you couldn't help it,--
yes, I will!" said the now dismal Dick.  "Did you encourage him?"

"O,--I don't know,--yes--no.  O, I think so!"

"Who was it?"  A pause.  "Tell me!"

"Mr. Shiner."

After a silence that was only disturbed by the fall of an apple, a
long-checked sigh from Dick, and a sob from Fancy, he said with real
austerity -

"Tell it all;--every word!"

"He looked at me, and I looked at him, and he said, "Will you let me
show you how to catch bullfinches down here by the stream?"  And I--
wanted to know very much--I did so long to have a bullfinch!  I
couldn't help that and I said, "Yes!" and then he said, "Come here."
And I went with him down to the lovely river, and then he said to
me, "Look and see how I do it, and then you'll know:  I put this
birdlime round this twig, and then I go here," he said, "and hide
away under a hush; and presently clever Mister Bird comes and
perches upon the twig, and flaps his wings, and you've got him
before you can say Jack"--something; O, O, O, I forget what!"

"Jack Sprat," mournfully suggested Dick through the cloud of his
misery.

"No, not Jack Sprat," she sobbed.

"Then 'twas Jack Robinson!" he said, with the emphasis of a man who
had resolved to discover every iota of the truth, or die.

"Yes, that was it!  And then I put my hand upon the rail of the
bridge to get across, and--That's all."

"Well, that isn't much, either," said Dick critically, and more
cheerfully.  "Not that I see what business Shiner has to take upon
himself to teach you anything.  But it seems--it do seem there must
have been more than that to set you up in such a dreadful taking?"

He looked into Fancy's eyes.  Misery of miseries!--guilt was written
there still.

"Now, Fancy, you've not told me all!" said Dick, rather sternly for
a quiet young man.

"O, don't speak so cruelly!  I am afraid to tell now!  If you hadn't
been harsh, I was going on to tell all; now I can't!"

"Come, dear Fancy, tell:  come.  I'll forgive; I must,--by heaven
and earth, I must, whether I will or no; I love you so!"

"Well, when I put my hand on the bridge, he touched it--"

"A scamp!" said Dick, grinding an imaginary human frame to powder.

"And then he looked at me, and at last he said, 'Are you in love
with Dick Dewy?'  And I said, 'Perhaps I am!' and then he said, 'I
wish you weren't then, for I want to marry you, with all my soul.'"

"There's a villain now!  Want to marry you!"  And Dick quivered with
the bitterness of satirical laughter.  Then suddenly remembering
that he might be reckoning without his host:  "Unless, to he sure,
you are willing to have him,--perhaps you are," he said, with the
wretched indifference of a castaway.

"No, indeed I am not!" she said, her sobs just beginning to take a
favourable turn towards cure.

"Well, then," said Dick, coming a little to his senses, "you've been
stretching it very much in giving such a dreadful beginning to such
a mere nothing.  And I know what you've done it for,--just because
of that gipsy-party!"  He turned away from her and took five paces
decisively, as if he were tired of an ungrateful country, including
herself "You did it to make me jealous, and I won't stand it!"  He
flung the words to her over his shoulder and then stalked on,
apparently very anxious to walk to the remotest of the Colonies that
very minute.

"O, O, O, Dick--Dick!" she cried, trotting after him like a pet
lamb, and really seriously alarmed at last, "you'll kill me!  My
impulses are bad--miserably wicked,--and I can't help it; forgive
me, Dick!  And I love you always; and those times when you look
silly and don't seem quite good enough for me,--just the same, I do,
Dick!  And there is something more serious, though not concerning
that walk with him."

"Well, what is it?" said Dick, altering his mind about walking to
the Colonies in fact, passing to the other extreme, and standing so
rooted to the road that he was apparently not even going home.

"Why this," she said, drying the beginning of a new flood of tears
she had been going to shed, "this is the serious part.  Father has
told Mr. Shiner that he would like him for a son-in-law, if he could
get me;--that he has his right hearty consent to come courting me!"



CHAPTER IV:  AN ARRANGEMENT



"That IS serious," said Dick, more intellectually than he had spoken
for a long time.

The truth was that Geoffrey knew nothing about his daughter's
continued walks and meetings with Dick.  When a hint that there were
symptoms of an attachment between them had first reached Geoffrey's
ears, he stated so emphatically that he must think the matter over
before any such thing could be allowed that, rather unwisely on
Dick's part, whatever it might have been on the lady's, the lovers
were careful to be seen together no more in public; and Geoffrey,
forgetting the report, did not think over the matter at all.  So Mr.
Shiner resumed his old position in Geoffrey's brain by mere flux of
time.  Even Shiner began to believe that Dick existed for Fancy no
more,--though that remarkably easy-going man had taken no active
steps on his own account as yet.

"And father has not only told Mr. Shiner that," continued Fancy,
"but he has written me a letter, to say he should wish me to
encourage Mr. Shiner, if 'twas convenient!"

"I must start off and see your father at once!" said Dick, taking
two or three vehement steps to the south, recollecting that Mr. Day
lived to the north, and coming back again.

"I think we had better see him together.  Not tell him what you come
for, or anything of the kind, until he likes you, and so win his
brain through his heart, which is always the way to manage people.
I mean in this way:  I am going home on Saturday week to help them
in the honey-taking.  You might come there to me, have something to
eat and drink, and let him guess what your coming signifies, without
saying it in so many words."

"We'll do it, dearest.  But I shall ask him for you, flat and plain;
not wait for his guessing."  And the lover then stepped close to
her, and attempted to give her one little kiss on the cheek, his
lips alighting however, on an outlying tract of her back hair by
reason of an impulse that had caused her to turn her head with a
jerk.  "Yes, and I'll put on my second-best suit and a clean shirt
and collar, and black my boots as if 'twas a Sunday.  'Twill have a
good appearance, you see, and that's a great deal to start with."

"You won't wear that old waistcoat, will you, Dick?"

"Bless you, no!  Why I--"

"I didn't mean to be personal, dear Dick," she said, fearing she had
hurt his feelings.  "'Tis a very nice waistcoat, but what I meant
was, that though it is an excellent waistcoat for a settled-down
man, it is not quite one for" (she waited, and a blush expanded over
her face, and then she went on again)--"for going courting in."

"No, I'll wear my best winter one, with the leather lining, that
mother made.  It is a beautiful, handsome waistcoat inside, yes, as
ever anybody saw.  In fact, only the other day, I unbuttoned it to
show a chap that very lining, and he said it was the strongest,
handsomest lining you could wish to see on the king's waistcoat
himself."

"_I_ don't quite know what to wear," she said, as if her habitual
indifference alone to dress had kept back so important a subject
till now.

"Why, that blue frock you wore last week."

"Doesn't set well round the neck.  I couldn't wear that."

"But I shan't care."

"No, you won't mind."

"Well, then it's all right.  Because you only care how you look to
me, do you, dear?  I only dress for you, that's certain."

"Yes, but you see I couldn't appear in it again very well."

"Any strange gentleman you mid meet in your journey might notice the
set of it, I suppose.  Fancy, men in love don't think so much about
how they look to other women."  It is difficult to say whether a
tone of playful banter or of gentle reproach prevailed in the
speech.

"Well then, Dick," she said, with good-humoured frankness, "I'll own
it.  I shouldn't like a stranger to see me dressed badly, even
though I am in love.  'Tis our nature, I suppose."

"You perfect woman!"

"Yes; if you lay the stress on 'woman,'" she murmured, looking at a
group of hollyhocks in flower, round which a crowd of butterflies
had gathered like female idlers round a bonnet-shop.

"But about the dress.  Why not wear the one you wore at our party?"

"That sets well, but a girl of the name of Bet Tallor, who lives
near our house, has had one made almost like it (only in pattern,
though of miserably cheap stuff), and I couldn't wear it on that
account.  Dear me, I am afraid I can't go now."

"O yes, you must; I know you will!" said Dick, with dismay.  "Why
not wear what you've got on?"

"What! this old one!  After all, I think that by wearing my gray one
Saturday, I can make the blue one do for Sunday.  Yes, I will.  A
hat or a bonnet, which shall it be?  Which do I look best in?"

"Well, I think the bonnet is nicest, more quiet and matronly."

"What's the objection to the hat?  Does it make me look old?"

"O no; the hat is well enough; but it makes you look rather too--you
won't mind me saying it, dear?"

"Not at all, for I shall wear the bonnet."

"--Rather too coquettish and flirty for an engaged young woman."

She reflected a minute.  "Yes; yes.  Still, after all, the hat would
do best; hats ARE best, you see.  Yes, I must wear the hat, dear
Dicky, because I ought to wear a hat, you know."




PART THE FORTH--AUTUMN




CHAPTER I:  GOING NUTTING


Dick, dressed in his 'second-best' suit, burst into Fancy's sitting-
room with a glow of pleasure on his face.

It was two o'clock on Friday, the day be fore her contemplated visit
to her father, and for some reason connected with cleaning the
school the children had been given this Friday afternoon for
pastime, in addition to the usual Saturday.

"Fancy! it happens just right that it is a leisure half day with
you.  Smart is lame in his near-foot-afore, and so, as I can't do
anything, I've made a holiday afternoon of it, and am come for you
to go nutting with me!"

She was sitting by the parlour window, with a blue frock lying
across her lap and scissors in her hand.

"Go nutting!  Yes.  But I'm afraid I can't go for an hour or so."

"Why not?  'Tis the only spare afternoon we may both have together
for weeks."

"This dress of mine, that I am going to wear on Sunday at Yalbury;--
I find it fits so badly that I must alter it a little, after all.  I
told the dressmaker to make it by a pattern I gave her at the time;
instead of that, she did it her own way, and made me look a perfect
fright."

"How long will you be?" he inquired, looking rather disappointed.

"Not long.  Do wait and talk to me; come, do, dear."

Dick sat down.  The talking progressed very favourably, amid the
snipping and sewing, till about half-past two, at which time his
conversation began to be varied by a slight tapping upon his toe
with a walking-stick he had cut from the hedge as he came along.
Fancy talked and answered him, but sometimes the answers were so
negligently given, that it was evident her thoughts lay for the
greater part in her lap with the blue dress.

The clock struck three.  Dick arose from his seat, walked round the
room with his hands behind him, examined all the furniture, then
sounded a few notes on the harmonium, then looked inside all the
books he could find, then smoothed Fancy's head with his hand.
Still the snipping and sewing went on.

The clock struck four.  Dick fidgeted about, yawned privately;
counted the knots in the table, yawned publicly; counted the flies
on the ceiling, yawned horribly; went into the kitchen and scullery,
and so thoroughly studied the principle upon which the pump was
constructed that he could have delivered a lecture on the subject.
Stepping back to Fancy, and finding still that she had not done, he
went into her garden and looked at her cabbages and potatoes, and
reminded himself that they seemed to him to wear a decidedly
feminine aspect; then pulled up several weeds, and came in again.
The clock struck five, and still the snipping and sewing went on.

Dick attempted to kill a fly, peeled all the rind off his walking-
stick, then threw the stick into the scullery because it was spoilt,
produced hideous discords from the harmonium, and accidentally
overturned a vase of flowers, the water from which ran in a rill
across the table and dribbled to the floor, where it formed a lake,
the shape of which, after the lapse of a few minutes, he began to
modify considerably with his foot, till it was like a map of England
and Wales.

"Well, Dick, you needn't have made quite such a mess."

"Well, I needn't, I suppose."  He walked up to the blue dress, and
looked at it with a rigid gaze.  Then an idea seemed to cross his
brain.

"Fancy."

"Yes."

"I thought you said you were going to wear your gray gown all day
to-morrow on your trip to Yalbury, and in the evening too, when I
shall be with you, and ask your father for you?"

"So I am."

"And the blue one only on Sunday?"

"And the blue one Sunday."

"Well, dear, I sha'n't be at Yalbury Sunday to see it."

"No, but I shall walk to Longpuddle church in the afternoon with
father, and such lots of people will be looking at me there, you
know; and it did set so badly round the neck."

"I never noticed it, and 'tis like nobody else would."

"They might."

"Then why not wear the gray one on Sunday as well?  'Tis as pretty
as the blue one."

"I might make the gray one do, certainly.  But it isn't so good; it
didn't cost half so much as this one, and besides, it would be the
same I wore Saturday."

"Then wear the striped one, dear."

"I might."

"Or the dark one."

"Yes, I might; but I want to wear a fresh one they haven't seen."

"I see, I see," said Dick, in a voice in which the tones of love
were decidedly inconvenienced by a considerable emphasis, his
thoughts meanwhile running as follows:  "I, the man she loves best
in the world, as she says, am to understand that my poor half-
holiday is to be lost, because she wants to wear on Sunday a gown
there is not the slightest necessity for wearing, simply, in fact,
to appear more striking than usual in the eyes of Longpuddle young
men; and I not there, either."

"Then there are three dresses good enough for my eyes, but neither
is good enough for the youths of Longpuddle," he said.

"No, not that exactly, Dick.  Still, you see, I do want--to look
pretty to them--there, that's honest!  But I sha'n't be much
longer."

"How much?"

"A quarter of an hour."

"Very well; I'll come in in a quarter of an hour."

"Why go away?"

"I mid as well."

He went out, walked down the road, and sat upon a gate.  Here he
meditated and meditated, and the more he meditated the more
decidedly did he begin to fume, and the more positive was he that
his time had been scandalously trifled with by Miss Fancy Day--that,
so far from being the simple girl who had never had a sweetheart
before, as she had solemnly assured him time after time, she was, if
not a flirt, a woman who had had no end of admirers; a girl most
certainly too anxious about her frocks; a girl, whose feelings,
though warm, were not deep; a girl who cared a great deal too much
how she appeared in the eyes of other men.  "What she loves best in
the world," he thought, with an incipient spice of his father's
grimness, "is her hair and complexion.  What she loves next best,
her gowns and hats; what she loves next best, myself, perhaps!"

Suffering great anguish at this disloyalty in himself and harshness
to his darling, yet disposed to persevere in it, a horribly cruel
thought crossed his mind.  He would not call for her, as he had
promised, at the end of a quarter of an hour!  Yes, it would be a
punishment she well deserved.  Although the best part of the
afternoon had been wasted he would go nutting as he had intended,
and go by himself.

He leaped over the gate, and pushed up the lane for nearly two
miles, till a winding path called Snail-Creep sloped up a hill and
entered a hazel copse by a hole hike a rabbit's burrow.  In he
plunged, vanished among the bushes, and in a short time there was no
sign of his existence upon earth, save an occasional rustling of
boughs and snapping of twigs in divers points of Grey's Wood.

Never man nutted as Dick nutted that afternoon.  He worked like a
galley slave.  Half-hour after half-hour passed away, and still he
gathered without ceasing.  At last, when the sun had set, and
bunches of nuts could not be distinguished from the leaves which
nourished them, he shouldered his bag, containing quite two pecks of
the finest produce of the wood, about as much use to him as two
pecks of stones from the road, strolled down the woodland track,
crossed the highway and entered the homeward lane, whistling as be
went.

Probably, Miss Fancy Day never before or after stood so low in Mr.
Dewy's opinion as on that afternoon.  In fact, it is just possible
that a few more blue dresses on the Longpuddle young men's account
would have clarified Dick's brain entirely, and made him once more a
free man.

But Venus had planned other developments, at any rate for the
present.  Cuckoo-Lane, the way he pursued, passed over a ridge which
rose keenly against the sky about fifty yards in his van.  Here,
upon the bright after-glow about the horizon, was now visible an
irregular shape, which at first he conceived to be a bough standing
a little beyond the line of its neighbours.  Then it seemed to move,
and, as he advanced still further, there was no doubt that it was a
living being sitting in the bank, head bowed on hand.  The grassy
margin entirely prevented his footsteps from being heard, and it was
not till he was close that the figure recognized him.  Up it sprang,
and he was face to face with Fancy.

"Dick, Dick!  O, is it you, Dick!"

"Yes, Fancy," said Dick, in a rather repentant tone, and lowering
his nuts.

She ran up to him, flung her parasol on the grass, put her little
head against his breast, and then there began a narrative,
disjointed by such a hysterical weeping as was never surpassed for
intensity in the whole history of love.

"O Dick," she sobbed out, "where have you been away from me?  O, I
have suffered agony, and thought you would never come any more!
'Tis cruel, Dick; no 'tisn't, it is justice!  I've been walking
miles and miles up and down Grey's Wood, trying to find you, till I
was wearied and worn out, and I could walk no further, and had come
back this far!  O Dick, directly you were gone, I thought I had
offended you and I put down the dress; 'tisn't finished now, and I
never will finish, it, and I'll wear an old one Sunday!  Yes, Dick,
I will, because I don't care what I wear when you are not by my
side--ha, you think I do, but I don't!--and I ran after you, and I
saw you go up Snail-Creep and not look back once, and then you
plunged in, and I after you; but I was too far behind.  O, I did
wish the horrid bushes had been cut down, so that I could see your
dear shape again!  And then I called out to you, and nobody
answered, and I was afraid to call very loud, lest anybody else
should hear me.  Then I kept wandering and wandering about, and it
was dreadful misery, Dick.  And then I shut my eyes and fell to
picturing you looking at some other woman, very pretty and nice, but
with no affection or truth in her at all, and then imagined you
saying to yourself, "Ah, she's as good as Fancy, for Fancy told me a
story, and was a flirt, and cared for herself more than me, so now
I'll have this one for my sweetheart."  O, you won't, will you,
Dick, for I do love you so!"

It is scarcely necessary to add that Dick renounced his freedom
there and then, and kissed her ten times over, and promised that no
pretty woman of the kind alluded to should ever engross his
thoughts; in short, that though he had been vexed with her, all such
vexation was past, and that henceforth and for ever it was simply
Fancy or death for him.  And then they set about proceeding
homewards, very slowly on account of Fancy's weariness, she leaning
upon his shoulder, and in addition receiving support from his arm
round her waist; though she had sufficiently recovered from her
desperate condition to sing to him, "Why are you wandering here, I
pray?" during the latter part of their walk.  Nor is it necessary to
describe in detail how the bag of nuts was quite forgotten until
three days later, when it was found among the brambles and restored
empty to Mrs. Dewy, her initials being marked thereon in red cotton;
and how she puzzled herself till her head ached upon the question of
how on earth her meal-bag could have got into Cuckoo-Lane.



CHAPTER II:  HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS



Saturday evening saw Dick Dewy journeying on foot to Yalbury Wood,
according to the arrangement with Fancy.

The landscape being concave, at the going down of the sun everything
suddenly assumed a uniform robe of shade.  The evening advanced from
sunset to dusk long before Dick's arrival, and his progress during
the latter portion of his walk through the trees was indicated by
the flutter of terrified birds that had been roosting over the path.
And in crossing the glades, masses of hot dry air, that had been
formed on the hills during the day, greeted his cheeks alternately
with clouds of damp night air from the valleys.  He reached the
keeper-steward's house, where the grass-plot and the garden in front
appeared light and pale against the unbroken darkness of the grove
from which he had emerged, and paused at the garden gate.

He had scarcely been there a minute when he beheld a sort of
procession advancing from the door in his front.  It consisted first
of Enoch the trapper, carrying a spade on his shoulder and a lantern
dangling in his hand; then came Mrs. Day, the light of the lantern
revealing that she bore in her arms curious objects about a foot
long, in the form of Latin crosses (made of lath and brown paper
dipped in brimstone--called matches by bee-masters); next came Miss
Day, with a shawl thrown over her head; and behind all, in the
gloom, Mr. Frederic Shiner.

Dick, in his consternation at finding Shiner present, was at a loss
how to proceed, and retired under a tree to collect his thoughts.

"Here I be, Enoch," said a voice; and the procession advancing
farther, the lantern's rays illuminated the figure of Geoffrey,
awaiting their arrival beside a row of bee-hives, in front of the
path.  Taking the spade from Enoch, he proceeded to dig two holes in
the earth beside the hives, the others standing round in a circle,
except Mrs. Day, who deposited her matches in the fork of an apple-
tree and returned to the house.  The party remaining were now lit up
in front by the lantern in their midst, their shadows radiating each
way upon the garden-plot like the spokes of a wheel.  An apparent
embarrassment of Fancy at the presence of Shiner caused a silence in
the assembly, during which the preliminaries of execution were
arranged, the matches fixed, the stake kindled, the two hives placed
over the two holes, and the earth stopped round the edges.  Geoffrey
then stood erect, and rather more, to straighten his backbone after
the digging.

"They were a peculiar family," said Mr. Shiner, regarding the hives
reflectively.

Geoffrey nodded.

"Those holes will be the grave of thousands!" said Fancy.  "I think
'tis rather a cruel thing to do."

Her father shook his head.  "No," he said, tapping the hives to
shake the dead bees from their cells, "if you suffocate 'em this
way, they only die once:  if you fumigate 'em in the new way, they
come to life again, and die o' starvation; so the pangs o' death be
twice upon 'em."

"I incline to Fancy's notion," said Mr. Shiner, laughing lightly.

"The proper way to take honey, so that the bees be neither starved
nor murdered, is a puzzling matter," said the keeper steadily.

"I should like never to take it from them," said Fancy.

"But 'tis the money," said Enoch musingly.  "For without money man
is a shadder!"

The lantern-light had disturbed many bees that had escaped from
hives destroyed some days earlier, and, demoralized by affliction,
were now getting a living as marauders about the doors of other
hives.  Several flew round the head and neck of Geoffrey; then
darted upon him with an irritated bizz.

Enoch threw down the lantern, and ran off and pushed his head into a
currant bush; Fancy scudded up the path; and Mr. Shiner floundered
away helter-skelter among the cabbages.  Geoffrey stood his ground,
unmoved and firm as a rock.  Fancy was the first to return, followed
by Enoch picking up the lantern.  Mr. Shiner still remained
invisible.

"Have the craters stung ye?" said Enoch to Geoffrey.

"No, not much--on'y a little here and there," he said with leisurely
solemnity, shaking one bee out of his shirt sleeve, pulling another
from among his hair, and two or three more from his neck.  The rest
looked on during this proceeding with a complacent sense of being
out of it,--much as a European nation in a state of internal
commotion is watched by its neighbours.

"Are those all of them, father?" said Fancy, when Geoffrey had
pulled away five.

"Almost all,--though I feel one or two more sticking into my
shoulder and side.  Ah! there's another just begun again upon my
backbone.  You lively young mortals, how did you get inside there?
However, they can't sting me many times more, poor things, for they
must be getting weak.  They mid as well stay in me till bedtime now,
I suppose."

As he himself was the only person affected by this arrangement, it
seemed satisfactory enough; and after a noise of feet kicking
against cabbages in a blundering progress among them, the voice of
Mr. Shiner was heard from the darkness in that direction.

"Is all quite safe again?"

No answer being returned to this query, he apparently assumed that
he might venture forth, and gradually drew near the lantern again.
The hives were now removed from their position over the holes, one
being handed to Enoch to carry indoors, and one being taken by
Geoffrey himself.

"Bring hither the lantern, Fancy:  the spade can bide."

Geoffrey and Enoch then went towards the house, leaving Shiner and
Fancy standing side by side on the garden-plot.

"Allow me," said Shiner, stooping for the lantern and seizing it at
the same time with Fancy.

"I can carry it," said Fancy, religiously repressing all inclination
to trifle.  She had thoroughly considered that subject after the
tearful explanation of the bird-catching adventure to Dick, and had
decided that it would be dishonest in her, as an engaged young
woman, to trifle with men's eyes and hands any more.  Finding that
Shiner still retained his hold of the lantern, she relinquished it,
and he, having found her retaining it, also let go.  The lantern
fell, and was extinguished.  Fancy moved on.

"Where is the path?" said Mr. Shiner.

"Here," said Fancy.  "Your eyes will get used to the dark in a
minute or two."

"Till that time will ye lend me your hand?"  Fancy gave him the
extreme tips of her fingers, and they stepped from the plot into the
path.

"You don't accept attentions very freely."

"It depends upon who offers them."

"A fellow like me, for instance."  A dead silence.

"Well, what do you say, Missie?"

"It then depends upon how they are offered."

"Not wildly, and yet not careless-like; not purposely, and yet not
by chance; not too quick nor yet too slow."

"How then?" said Fancy.

"Coolly and practically," he said.  "How would that kind of love be
taken?"

"Not anxiously, and yet not indifferently; neither blushing nor
pale; nor religiously nor yet quite wickedly."

"Not at all."

Geoffrey Day's storehouse at the back of his dwelling was hung with
bunches of dried horehound, mint, and sage; brown-paper bags of
thyme and lavender; and long ropes of clean onions.  On shelves were
spread large red and yellow apples, and choice selections of early
potatoes for seed next year;--vulgar crowds of commoner kind lying
beneath in heaps.  A few empty beehives were clustered around a nail
in one corner, under which stood two or three barrels of new cider
of the first crop, each bubbling and squirting forth from the yet
open bunghole.

Fancy was now kneeling beside the two inverted hives, one of which
rested against her lap, for convenience in operating upon the
contents.  She thrust her sleeves above her elbows, and inserted her
small pink hand edgewise between each white lobe of honeycomb,
performing the act so adroitly and gently as not to unseal a single
cell.  Then cracking the piece off at the crown of the hive by a
slight backward and forward movement, she lifted each portion as it
was loosened into a large blue platter, placed on a bench at her
side.

"Bother these little mortals!" said Geoffrey, who was holding the
light to her, and giving his back an uneasy twist.  "I really think
I may as well go indoors and take 'em out, poor things! for they
won't let me alone.  There's two a stinging wi' all their might now.
I'm sure I wonder their strength can last so long."

"All right, friend; I'll hold the candle whilst you are gone," said
Mr. Shiner, leisurely taking the light, and allowing Geoffrey to
depart, which he did with his usual long paces.

He could hardly have gone round to the house-door when other
footsteps were heard approaching the outbuilding; the tip of a
finger appeared in the hole through which the wood latch was lifted,
and Dick Dewy came in, having been all this time walking up and down
the wood, vainly waiting for Shiner's departure.

Fancy looked up and welcomed him rather confusedly.  Shiner grasped
the candlestick more firmly, and, lest doing this in silence should
not imply to Dick with sufficient force that he was quite at home
and cool, he sang invincibly -


"'King Arthur he had three sons.'"


"Father here?" said Dick.

"Indoors, I think," said Fancy, looking pleasantly at him.

Dick surveyed the scene, and did not seem inclined to hurry off just
at that moment.  Shiner went on singing


"'The miller was drown'd in his pond,
The weaver was hung in his yarn,
And the d- ran away with the little tail-or,
With the broadcloth under his arm.'"


"That's a terrible crippled rhyme, if that's your rhyme!" said Dick,
with a grain of superciliousness in his tone.

"It's no use your complaining to me about the rhyme!" said Mr.
Shiner.  "You must go to the man that made it."

Fancy by this time had acquired confidence.

"Taste a bit, Mr. Dewy," she said, holding up to him a small
circular piece of honeycomb that had been the last in the row of
layers, remaining still on her knees and flinging back her head to
look in his face; "and then I'll taste a bit too."

"And I, if you please," said Mr. Shiner.  Nevertheless the farmer
looked superior, as if he could even now hardly join the trifling
from very importance of station; and after receiving the honeycomb
from Fancy, he turned it over in his hand till the cells began to be
crushed, and the liquid honey ran down from his fingers in a thin
string.

Suddenly a faint cry from Fancy caused them to gaze at her.

"What's the matter, dear?" said Dick.

"It is nothing, but O-o! a bee has stung the inside of my lip!  He
was in one of the cells I was eating!"

"We must keep down the swelling, or it may be serious!" said Shiner,
stepping up and kneeling beside her.  "Let me see it."

"No, no!"

"Just let ME see it," said Dick, kneeling on the other side:  and
after some hesitation she pressed down her lip with one finger to
show the place.  "O, I hope 'twill soon he better!  I don't mind a
sting in ordinary places, hut it is so bad upon your lip," she added
with tears in her eyes, and writhing a little from the pain.

Shiner held the light above his head and pushed his face close to
Fancy's, as if the lip had been shown exclusively to himself, upon
which Dick pushed closer, as if Shiner were not there at all.

"It is swelling," said Dick to her right aspect.

"It isn't swelling," said Shiner to her left aspect.

"Is it dangerous on the lip?" cried Fancy.  "I know it is dangerous
on the tongue."

"O no, not dangerous!" answered Dick.

"Rather dangerous," had answered Shiner simultaneously.

"I must try to bear it!" said Fancy, turning again to the hives.

"Hartshorn-and-oil is a good thing to put to it, Miss Day," said
Shiner with great concern.

"Sweet-oil-and-hartshorn I've found to be a good thing to cure
stings, Miss Day," said Dick with greater concern.

"We have some mixed indoors; would you kindly run and get it for
me?" she said.

Now, whether by inadvertence, or whether by mischievous intention,
the individuality of the YOU was so carelessly denoted that both
Dick and Shiner sprang to their feet like twin acrobats, and marched
abreast to the door; both seized the latch and lifted it, and
continued marching on, shoulder to shoulder, in the same manner to
the dwelling-house.  Not only so, but entering the room, they
marched as before straight up to Mrs. Day's chair, letting the door
in the oak partition slam so forcibly, that the rows of pewter on
the dresser rang like a bell.

"Mrs. Day, Fancy has stung her lip, and wants you to give me the
hartshorn, please," said Mr. Shiner, very close to Mrs. Day's face.

"O, Mrs. Day, Fancy has asked me to bring out the hartshorn, please,
because she has stung her lip!" said Dick, a little closer to Mrs.
Day's face.

"Well, men alive! that's no reason why you should eat me, I
suppose!" said Mrs. Day, drawing back.

She searched in the corner-cupboard, produced the bottle, and began
to dust the cork, the rim, and every other part very carefully,
Dick's hand and Shiner's hand waiting side by side.

"Which is head man?" said Mrs. Day.  "Now, don't come mumbudgeting
so close again.  Which is head man?"

Neither spoke; and the bottle was inclined towards Shiner.  Shiner,
as a high-class man, would not look in the least triumphant, and
turned to go off with it as Geoffrey came downstairs after the
search in his linen for concealed bees.

"O--that you, Master Dewy?"

Dick assured the keeper that it was; and the young man then
determined upon a bold stroke for the attainment of his end,
forgetting that the worst of bold strokes is the disastrous
consequences they involve if they fail.

"I've come on purpose to speak to you very particular, Mr. Day," he
said, with a crushing emphasis intended for the ears of Mr. Shiner,
who was vanishing round the door-post at that moment.

"Well, I've been forced to go upstairs and unrind myself, and shake
some bees out o' me" said Geoffrey, walking slowly towards the open
door, and standing on the threshold.  "The young rascals got into my
shirt and wouldn't be quiet nohow."

Dick followed him to the door.

"I've come to speak a word to you," he repeated, looking out at the
pale mist creeping up from the gloom of the valley.  "You may
perhaps guess what it is about."

The keeper lowered his hands into the depths of his pockets, twirled
his eyes, balanced himself on his toes, looked as perpendicularly
downward as if his glance were a plumb-line, then horizontally,
collecting together the cracks that lay about his face till they
were all in the neighbourhood of his eyes.

"Maybe I don't know," he replied.

Dick said nothing; and the stillness was disturbed only by some
small bird that was being killed by an owl in the adjoining wood,
whose cry passed into the silence without mingling with it.

"I've left my hat up in chammer," said Geoffrey; "wait while I step
up and get en."

"I'll be in the garden," said Dick.

He went round by a side wicket into the garden, and Geoffrey went
upstairs.  It was the custom in Mellstock and its vicinity to
discuss matters of pleasure and ordinary business inside the house,
and to reserve the garden for very important affairs:  a custom
which, as is supposed, originated in the desirability of getting
away at such times from the other members of the family when there
was only one room for living in, though it was now quite as
frequently practised by those who suffered from no such limitation
to the size of their domiciles.

The head-keeper's form appeared in the dusky garden, and Dick walked
towards him.  The elder paused and leant over the rail of a piggery
that stood on the left of the path, upon which Dick did the same;
and they both contemplated a whitish shadowy shape that was moving
about and grunting among the straw of the interior.

"I've come to ask for Fancy," said Dick.

"I'd as lief you hadn't."

"Why should that be, Mr. Day?"

"Because it makes me say that you've come to ask what ye be'n't
likely to have.  Have ye come for anything else?"

"Nothing."

"Then I'll just tell 'ee you've come on a very foolish errand.  D'ye
know what her mother was?"

"No."

"A teacher in a landed family's nursery, who was foolish enough to
marry the keeper of the same establishment; for I was only a keeper
then, though now I've a dozen other irons in the fire as steward
here for my lord, what with the timber sales and the yearly
fellings, and the gravel and sand sales and one thing and 'tother.
However, d'ye think Fancy picked up her good manners, the smooth
turn of her tongue, her musical notes, and her knowledge of books,
in a homely hole like this?"

"No."

"D'ye know where?"

"No."

"Well, when I went a-wandering after her mother's death, she lived
with her aunt, who kept a boarding-school, till her aunt married
Lawyer Green--a man as sharp as a needle--and the school was broke
up.  Did ye know that then she went to the training-school, and that
her name stood first among the Queen's scholars of her year?"

"I've heard so."

"And that when she sat for her certificate as Government teacher,
she had the highest of the first class?"

"Yes."

"Well, and do ye know what I live in such a miserly way for when
I've got enough to do without it, and why I make her work as a
schoolmistress instead of living here?"

"No."

"That if any gentleman, who sees her to be his equal in polish,
should want to marry her, and she want to marry him, he sha'n't be
superior to her in pocket.  Now do ye think after this that you be
good enough for her?"

"No."

"Then good-night t'ee, Master Dewy."

"Good-night, Mr. Day."

Modest Dick's reply had faltered upon his tongue, and he turned away
wondering at his presumption in asking for a woman whom he had seen
from the beginning to be so superior to him.



CHAPTER III:  FANCY IN THE RAIN



The next scene is a tempestuous afternoon in the following month,
and Fancy Day is discovered walking from her father's home towards
Mellstock.

A single vast gray cloud covered the country, from which the small
rain and mist had just begun to blow down in wavy sheets,
alternately thick and thin.  The trees of the fields and plantations
writhed like miserable men as the air wound its way swiftly among
them:  the lowest portions of their trunks, that had hardly ever
been known to move, were visibly rocked by the fiercer gusts,
distressing the mind by its painful unwontedness, as when a strong
man is seen to shed tears.  Low-hanging boughs went up and down;
high and erect boughs went to and fro; the blasts being so
irregular, and divided into so many cross--currents, that
neighbouring branches of the same tree swept the skies in
independent motions, crossed each other, or became entangled.
Across the open spaces flew flocks of green and yellowish leaves,
which, after travelling a long distance from their parent trees,
reached the ground, and lay there with their under--sides upward.

As the rain and wind increased, and Fancy's bonnet--ribbons leapt
more and more snappishly against her chin, she paused on entering
Mellstock Lane to consider her latitude, and the distance to a place
of shelter.  The nearest house was Elizabeth Endorfield's, in Higher
Mellstock, whose cottage and garden stood not far from the junction
of that hamlet with the road she followed.  Fancy hastened onward,
and in five minutes entered a gate, which shed upon her toes a flood
of water-drops as she opened it.

"Come in, chiel!" a voice exclaimed, before Fancy had knocked:  a
promptness that would have surprised her had she not known that Mrs.
Endorfield was an exceedingly and exceptionally sharp woman in the
use of her eyes and ears.

Fancy went in and sat down.  Elizabeth was paring potatoes for her
husband's supper.

Scrape, scrape, scrape; then a toss, and splash went a potato into a
bucket of water.

Now, as Fancy listlessly noted these proceedings of the dame, she
began to reconsider an old subject that hay uppermost in her heart.
Since the interview between her father and Dick, the days had been
melancholy days for her.  Geoffrey's firm opposition to the notion
of Dick as a son-in-law was more than she had expected.  She had
frequently seen her lover since that time, it is true, and had loved
him more for the opposition than she would have otherwise dreamt of
doing--which was a happiness of a certain kind.  Yet, though love is
thus an end in itself, it must be believed to be the means to
another end if it is to assume the rosy hues of an unalloyed
pleasure.  And such a belief Fancy and Dick were emphatically denied
just now.

Elizabeth Endorfield had a repute among women which was in its
nature something between distinction and notoriety.  It was founded
on the following items of character.  She was shrewd and
penetrating; her house stood in a lonely place; she never went to
church; she wore a red cloak; she always retained her bonnet indoors
and she had a pointed chin.  Thus far her attributes were distinctly
Satanic; and those who looked no further called her, in plain terms
a witch.  But she was not gaunt, nor ugly in the upper part of her
face, nor particularly strange in manner; so that, when her more
intimate acquaintances spoke of her the term was softened, and she
became simply a Deep Body, who was as long-headed as she was high.
It may be stated that Elizabeth, belonged to a class of suspects who
were gradually losing their mysterious characteristics under the
administration of the young vicar; though, during the long reign of
Mr. Grinham, the parish of Mellstock had proved extremely favourable
to the growth of witches.

While Fancy was revolving all this in her mind, and putting it to
herself whether it was worth while to tell her troubles to
Elizabeth, and ask her advice in getting out of them, the witch
spoke.

"You be down--proper down," she said suddenly, dropping another
potato into the bucket.

Fancy took no notice.

"About your young man."

Fancy reddened.  Elizabeth seemed to be watching her thoughts.
Really, one would almost think she must have the powers people
ascribed to her.

"Father not in the humour for't, hey?"  Another potato was finished
and flung in.  "Ah, I know about it.  Little birds tell me things
that people don't dream of my knowing."

Fancy was desperate about Dick, and here was a chance--O, such a
wicked chance--of getting help; and what was goodness beside love!

"I wish you'd tell me how to put him in the humour for it?" she
said.

"That I could soon do," said the witch quietly.

"Really?  O, do; anyhow--I don't care--so that it is done!  How
could I do it, Mrs. Endorfield?"

"Nothing so mighty wonderful in it."

"Well, but how?"

"By witchery, of course!" said Elizabeth.

"No!" said Fancy.

"'Tis, I assure ye.  Didn't you ever hear I was a witch?"

"Well," hesitated Fancy, "I have heard you called so."

"And you believed it?"

"I can't say that I did exactly believe it, for 'tis very horrible
and wicked; but, O, how I do wish it was possible for you to be
one!"

"So I am.  And I'll tell you how to bewitch your father to let you
marry Dick Dewy."

"Will it hurt him, poor thing?"

"Hurt who?"

"Father."

"No; the charm is worked by common sense, and the spell can only be
broke by your acting stupidly."

Fancy looked rather perplexed, and Elizabeth went on:


"This fear of Lizz--whatever 'tis -
By great and small;
She makes pretence to common sense,
And that's all.


"You must do it like this."  The witch laid down her knife and
potato, and then poured into Fancy's ear a long and detailed list of
directions, glancing up from the corner of her eye into Fancy's face
with an expression of sinister humour.  Fancy's face brightened,
clouded, rose and sank, as the narrative proceeded.  "There," said
Elizabeth at length, stooping for the knife and another potato, "do
that, and you'll have him by-long and by-late, my dear."

"And do it I will!" said Fancy.

She then turned her attention to the external world once more.  The
rain continued as usual, but the wind had abated considerably during
the discourse.  Judging that it was now possible to keep an umbrella
erect, she pulled her hood again over her bonnet, bade the witch
good-bye, and went her way.



CHAPTER IV:  THE SPELL



Mrs. Endorfield's advice was duly followed.

"I be proper sorry that your daughter isn't so well as she might
be," said a Mellstock man to Geoffrey one morning.

"But is there anything in it?" said Geoffrey uneasily, as he shifted
his hat to the right.  "I can't understand the report.  She didn't
complain to me a bit when I saw her."

"No appetite at all, they say."

Geoffrey crossed to Mellstock and called at the school that
afternoon.  Fancy welcomed him as usual, and asked him to stay and
take tea with her.

"I be'n't much for tea, this time o' day," he said, but stayed.

During the meal he watched her narrowly.  And to his great
consternation discovered the following unprecedented change in the
healthy girl--that she cut herself only a diaphanous slice of bread-
and-butter, and, laying it on her plate, passed the meal-time in
breaking it into pieces, but eating no more than about one-tenth of
the slice.  Geoffrey hoped she would say something about Dick, and
finish up by weeping, as she had done after the decision against him
a few days subsequent to the interview in the garden.  But nothing
was said, and in due time Geoffrey departed again for Yalbury Wood.

"'Tis to be hoped poor Miss Fancy will be able to keep on her
school," said Geoffrey's man Enoch to Geoffrey the following week,
as they were shovelling up ant-hills in the wood.

Geoffrey stuck in the shovel, swept seven or eight ants from his
sleeve, and killed another that was prowling round his ear, then
looked perpendicularly into the earth as usual, waiting for Enoch to
say more.  "Well, why shouldn't she?" said the keeper at last.

"The baker told me yesterday," continued Enoch, shaking out another
emmet that had run merrily up his thigh, "that the bread he've left
at that there school-house this last month would starve any mouse in
the three creations; that 'twould so!  And afterwards I had a pint
o' small down at Morrs's, and there I heard more."

"What might that ha' been?"

"That she used to have a pound o' the best rolled butter a week,
regular as clockwork, from Dairyman Viney's for herself, as well as
just so much salted for the helping girl, and the 'ooman she calls
in; but now the same quantity d'last her three weeks, and then 'tis
thoughted she throws it away sour."

"Finish doing the emmets, and carry the bag home-along."  The keeper
resumed his gun, tucked it under his arm, and went on without
whistling to the dogs, who however followed, with a bearing meant to
imply that they did not expect any such attentions when their master
was reflecting.

On Saturday morning a note came from Fancy.  He was not to trouble
about sending her the couple of rabbits, as was intended, because
she feared she should not want them.  Later in the day Geoffrey went
to Casterbridge and called upon the butcher who served Fancy with
fresh meat, which was put down to her father's account.

"I've called to pay up our little bill, Neighbour Haylock, and you
can gie me the chiel's account at the same time."

Mr. Haylock turned round three quarters of a circle in the midst of
a heap of joints, altered the expression of his face from meat to
money, went into a little office consisting only of a door and a
window, looked very vigorously into a book which possessed length
but no breadth; and then, seizing a piece of paper and scribbling
thereupon, handed the bill.

Probably it was the first time in the history of commercial
transactions that the quality of shortness in a butcher's bill was a
cause of tribulation to the debtor.  "Why, this isn't all she've had
in a whole month!" said Geoffrey.

"Every mossel," said the butcher--"(now, Dan, take that leg and
shoulder to Mrs. White's, and this eleven pound here to Mr.
Martin's)--you've been treating her to smaller joints lately, to my
thinking, Mr. Day?"

"Only two or three little scram rabbits this last week, as I am
alive--I wish I had!"

"Well, my wife said to me--(Dan! not too much, not too much on that
tray at a time; better go twice)--my wife said to me as she posted
up the books:  she says, "Miss Day must have been summer during that
hot muggy weather much for us; for depend upon't," she says, "she've
been trying John Grimmett unknown to us:  see her account else."
'Tis little, of course, at the best of times, being only for one,
but now 'tis next kin to nothing."

"I'll inquire," said Geoffrey despondingly.

He returned by way of Mellstock, and called upon Fancy, in
fulfilment of a promise.  It being Saturday, the children were
enjoying a holiday, and on entering the residence Fancy was nowhere
to be seen.  Nan, the charwoman, was sweeping the kitchen.

"Where's my da'ter?" said the keeper.

"Well, you see she was tired with the week's teaching, and this
morning she said, "Nan, I sha'n't get up till the evening."  You
see, Mr. Day, if people don't eat, they can't work; and as she've
gie'd up eating, she must gie up working."

"Have ye carried up any dinner to her?"

"No; she don't want any.  There, we all know that such things don't
come without good reason--not that I wish to say anything about a
broken heart, or anything of the kind."

Geoffrey's own heart felt inconveniently large just then.  He went
to the staircase and ascended to his daughter's door.

"Fancy!"

"Come in, father."

To see a person in bed from any cause whatever, on a fine afternoon,
is depressing enough; and here was his only child Fancy, not only in
bed, but looking very pale.  Geoffrey was visibly disturbed.

"Fancy, I didn't expect to see thee here, chiel," he said.  "What's
the matter?"

"I'm not well, father."

"How's that?"

"Because I think of things."

"What things can you have to think o' so mortal much?"

"You know, father."

"You think I've been cruel to thee in saying that that penniless
Dick o' thine sha'n't marry thee, I suppose?"

No answer.

"Well, you know, Fancy, I do it for the best, and he isn't good
enough for thee.  You know that well enough."  Here he again looked
at her as she lay.  "Well, Fancy, I can't let my only chiel die; and
if you can't live without en, you must ha' en, I suppose."

"O, I don't want him like that; all against your will, and
everything so disobedient!" sighed the invalid.

"No, no, 'tisn't against my will.  My wish is, now I d'see how 'tis
hurten thee to live without en, that he shall marry thee as soon as
we've considered a little.  That's my wish flat and plain, Fancy.
There, never cry, my little maid!  You ought to ha' cried afore; no
need o' crying now 'tis all over.  Well, howsoever, try to step over
and see me and mother-law to-morrow, and ha' a bit of dinner wi'
us."

"And--Dick too?"

"Ay, Dick too, 'far's I know."

"And WHEN do you think you'll have considered, father, and he may
marry me?" she coaxed.

"Well, there, say next Midsummer; that's not a day too long to
wait."

On leaving the school Geoffrey went to the tranter's.  Old William
opened the door.

"Is your grandson Dick in 'ithin, William?"

"No, not just now, Mr. Day.  Though he've been at home a good deal
lately."

"O, how's that?"

"What wi' one thing, and what wi' t'other, he's all in a mope, as
might be said.  Don't seem the feller he used to.  Ay, 'a will sit
studding and thinking as if 'a were going to turn chapel-member, and
then do nothing but traypse and wamble about.  Used to be such a
chatty boy, too, Dick did; and now 'a don't speak at all.  But won't
ye step inside?  Reuben will be home soon, 'a b'lieve."

"No, thank you, I can't stay now.  Will ye just ask Dick if he'll do
me the kindness to step over to Yalbury to-morrow with my da'ter
Fancy, if she's well enough?  I don't like her to come by herself,
now she's not so terrible topping in health."

"So I've heard.  Ay, sure, I'll tell him without fail."



CHAPTER V:  AFTER GAINING HER POINT



The visit to Geoffrey passed off as delightfully as a visit might
have been expected to pass off when it was the first day of smooth
experience in a hitherto obstructed love-course.  And then came a
series of several happy days, of the same undisturbed serenity.
Dick could court her when he chose; stay away when he chose,--which
was never; walk with her by winding streams and waterfalls and
autumn scenery till dews arid twilight sent them home.  And thus
they drew near the day of the Harvest Thanksgiving, which was also
the time chosen for opening the organ in Mellstock Church.

It chanced that Dick on that very day was called away from
Mellstock.  A young acquaintance had died of consumption at
Charmley, a neighbouring village, on the previous Monday, and Dick,
in fulfilment of a long-standing promise, was to assist in carrying
him to the grave.  When on Tuesday, Dick went towards the school to
acquaint Fancy with the fact, it is difficult to say whether his own
disappointment at being denied the sight of her triumphant debut as
organist, was greater than his vexation that his pet should on this
great occasion be deprived of the pleasure of his presence.
However, the intelligence was communicated.  She bore it as she best
could, not without many expressions of regret, and convictions that
her performance would be nothing to her now.

Just before eleven o'clock on Sunday he set out upon his sad errand.
The funeral was to be immediately after the morning service, and as
there were four good miles to walk, driving being inconvenient, it
became necessary to start comparatively early.  Half an hour later
would certainly have answered his purpose quite as well, yet at the
last moment nothing would content his ardent mind but that he must
go a mile out of his way in the direction of the school, in the hope
of getting a glimpse of his Love as she started for church.

Striking, therefore, into the lane towards the school, instead of
across the ewelease direct to Charmley, he arrived opposite her door
as his goddess emerged.

If ever a woman looked a divinity, Fancy Day appeared one that
morning as she floated down those school steps, in the form of a
nebulous collection of colours inclining to blue.  With an audacity
unparalleled in the whole history of village-school-mistresses at
this date--partly owing, no doubt, to papa's respectable
accumulation of cash, which rendered her profession not altogether
one of necessity--she had actually donned a hat and feather, and
lowered her hitherto plainly looped-up hair, which now fell about
her shoulders in a profusion of curls.  Poor Dick was astonished:
he had never seen her look so distractingly beautiful before, save
on Christmas-eve, when her hair was in the same luxuriant condition
of freedom.  But his first burst of delighted surprise was followed
by less comfortable feelings, as soon as his brain recovered its
power to think.

Fancy had blushed;--was it with confusion?  She had also
involuntarily pressed back her curls.  She had not expected him.

"Fancy, you didn't know me for a moment in my funeral clothes, did
you?"

"Good-morning, Dick--no, really, I didn't know you for an instant in
such a sad suit."

He looked again at the gay tresses and hat.  "You've never dressed
so charming before, dearest."

"I like to hear you praise me in that way, Dick," she said, smiling
archly.  "It is meat and drink to a woman.  Do I look nice really?"

"Fie! you know it.  Did you remember,--I mean didn't you remember
about my going away to-day?"

"Well, yes, I did, Dick; but, you know, I wanted to look well;--
forgive me."

"Yes, darling; yes, of course,--there's nothing to forgive.  No, I
was only thinking that when we talked on Tuesday and Wednesday and
Thursday and Friday about my absence to-day, and I was so sorry for
it, you said, Fancy, so were you sorry, and almost cried, and said
it would be no pleasure to you to be the attraction of the church
to-day, since I could not be there."

"My dear one, neither will it be so much pleasure to me . . . But I
do take a little delight in my life, I suppose," she pouted.

"Apart from mine?"

She looked at him with perplexed eyes.  "I know you are vexed with
me, Dick, and it is because the first Sunday I have curls and a hat
and feather since I have been here happens to be the very day you
are away and won't be with me.  Yes, say it is, for that is it!  And
you think that all this week I ought to have remembered you wouldn't
be here to-day, and not have cared to be better dressed than usual.
Yes, you do, Dick, and it is rather unkind!"

"No, no," said Dick earnestly and simply, "I didn't think so badly
of you as that.  I only thought that--if YOU had been going away, I
shouldn't have tried new attractions for the eyes of other people.
But then of course you and I are different, naturally."

"Well, perhaps we are."

"Whatever will the vicar say, Fancy?"

"I don't fear what he says in the least!" she answered proudly.
"But he won't say anything of the sort you think.  No, no."

"He can hardly have conscience to, indeed."

"Now come, you say, Dick, that you quite forgive me, for I must go,"
she said with sudden gaiety, and skipped backwards into the porch.
"Come here, sir;--say you forgive me, and then you shall kiss me;--
you never have yet when I have worn curls, you know.  Yes, just
where you want to so much,--yes, you may!"

Dick followed her into the inner corner, where he was probably not
slow in availing himself of the privilege offered.

"Now that's a treat for you, isn't it?" she continued.  "Good-bye,
or I shall be late.  Come and see me to-morrow:  you'll be tired to
night."

Thus they parted, and Fancy proceeded to the church.  The organ
stood on one side of the chancel, close to and under the immediate
eye of the vicar when he was in the pulpit, and also in full view of
the congregation.  Here she sat down, for the first time in such a
conspicuous position, her seat having previously been in a remote
spot in the aisle.

"Good heavens--disgraceful!  Curls and a hat and feather!" said the
daughters of the small gentry, who had either only curly hair
without a hat and feather, or a hat and feather without curly hair.
"A bonnet for church always," said sober matrons.

That Mr. Maybold was conscious of her presence close beside him
during the sermon; that he was not at all angry at her development
of costume; that he admired her, she perceived.  But she did not see
that he loved her during that sermon-time as he had never loved a
woman before; that her proximity was a strange delight to him; and
that he gloried in her musical success that morning in a spirit
quite beyond a mere cleric's glory at the inauguration of a new
order of things.

The old choir, with humbled hearts, no longer took their seats in
the gallery as heretofore (which was now given up to the school-
children who were not singers, and a pupil-teacher), but were
scattered about with their wives in different parts of the church.
Having nothing to do with conducting the service for almost the
first time in their lives, they all felt awkward, out of place,
abashed, and inconvenienced by their hands.  The tranter had
proposed that they should stay away to-day and go nutting, but
grandfather William would not hear of such a thing for a moment.
"No," he replied reproachfully, and quoted a verse "Though this has
come upon us, let not our hearts be turned back, or our steps go out
of the way."

So they stood and watched the curls of hair trailing down the back
of the successful rival, and the waving of her feather, as she
swayed her head.  After a few timid notes and uncertain touches her
playing became markedly correct, and towards the end full and free.
But, whether from prejudice or unbiassed judgment, the venerable
body of musicians could not help thinking that the simpler notes
they had been wont to bring forth were more in keeping with the
simplicity of their old church than the crowded chords and
interludes it was her pleasure to produce.



CHAPTER VI:  INTO TEMPTATION



The day was done, and Fancy was again in the school-house.  About
five o'clock it began to rain, and in rather a dull frame of mind
she wandered into the schoolroom, for want of something better to
do.  She was thinking--of her lover Dick Dewy?  Not precisely.  Of
how weary she was of living alone:  how unbearable it would be to
return to Yalbury under the rule of her strange-tempered step-
mother; that it was far better to be married to anybody than do
that; that eight or nine long months had yet to be lived through ere
the wedding could take place.

At the side of the room were high windows of Ham-hill stone, upon
either sill of which she could sit by first mounting a desk and
using it as a footstool.  As the evening advanced here she perched
herself, as was her custom on such wet and gloomy occasions, put on
a light shawl and bonnet, opened the window, and looked out at the
rain.

The window overlooked a field called the Grove, and it was the
position from which she used to survey the crown of Dick's passing
hat in the early days of their acquaintance and meetings.  Not a
living soul was now visible anywhere; the rain kept all people
indoors who were not forced abroad by necessity, and necessity was
less importunate on Sundays than during the week.

Sitting here and thinking again--of her lover, or of the sensation
she had created at church that day?--well, it is unknown--thinking
and thinking she saw a dark masculine figure arising into
distinctness at the further end of the Grove--a man without an
umbrella.  Nearer and nearer he came, and she perceived that he was
in deep mourning, and then that it was Dick.  Yes, in the fondness
and foolishness of his young heart, after walking four miles, in a
drizzling rain without overcoat or umbrella, and in face of a remark
from his love that he was not to come because he would be tired, he
had made it his business to wander this mile out of his way again,
from sheer wish of spending ten minutes in her presence.

"O Dick, how wet you are!" she said, as he drew up under the window.
"Why, your coat shines as if it had been varnished, and your hat--my
goodness, there's a streaming hat!"

"O, I don't mind, darling!" said Dick cheerfully.  "Wet never hurts
me, though I am rather sorry for my best clothes.  However, it
couldn't be helped; we lent all the umbrellas to the women.  I don't
know when I shall get mine back!"

"And look, there's a nasty patch of something just on your
shoulder."

"Ah, that's japanning; it rubbed off the clamps of poor Jack's
coffin when we lowered him from our shoulders upon the bier!  I
don't care about that, for 'twas the last deed I could do for him;
and 'tis hard if you can't afford a coat for an old friend."

Fancy put her hand to her mouth for half a minute.  Underneath the
palm of that little hand there existed for that half-minute a little
yawn.

"Dick, I don't like you to stand there in the wet.  And you mustn't
sit down.  Go home and change your things.  Don't stay another
minute."

"One kiss after coming so far," he pleaded.

"If I can reach, then."

He looked rather disappointed at not being invited round to the
door.  She twisted from her seated position and bent herself
downwards, but not even by standing on the plinth was it possible
for Dick to get his lips into contact with hers as she held them.
By great exertion she might have reached a little lower; but then
she would have exposed her head to the rain.

"Never mind, Dick; kiss my hand," she said, flinging it down to him.
"Now, good-bye."

"Good-bye."

He walked slowly away, turning and turning again to look at her till
he was out of sight.  During the retreat she said to herself, almost
involuntarily, and still conscious of that morning's triumph--"I
like Dick, and I love him; but how plain and sorry a man looks in
the rain, with no umbrella, and wet through!"

As he vanished, she made as if to descend from her seat; but
glancing in the other direction she saw another form coming along
the same track.  It was also that of a man.  He, too, was in black
from top to toe; but he carried an umbrella.

He drew nearer, and the direction of the rain caused him so to slant
his umbrella that from her height above the ground his head was
invisible, as she was also to him.  He passed in due time directly
beneath her, and in looking down upon the exterior of his umbrella
her feminine eyes perceived it to be of superior silk--less common
at that date than since--and of elegant make.  He reached the
entrance to the building, and Fancy suddenly lost sight of him.
Instead of pursuing the roadway as Dick had done he had turned
sharply round into her own porch.

She jumped to the floor, hastily flung off her shawl and bonnet,
smoothed and patted her hair till the curls hung in passable
condition, and listened.  No knock.  Nearly a minute passed, and
still there was no knock.  Then there arose a soft series of raps,
no louder than the tapping of a distant woodpecker, and barely
distinct enough to reach her ears.  She composed herself and flung
open the door.

In the porch stood Mr. Maybold.

There was a warm flush upon his face, and a bright flash in his
eyes, which made him look handsomer than she had ever seen him
before.

"Good-evening, Miss Day."

"Good-evening, Mr. Maybold," she said, in a strange state of mind.
She had noticed, beyond the ardent hue of his face, that his voice
had a singular tremor in it, and that his hand shook like an aspen
leaf when he laid his umbrella in the corner of the porch.  Without
another word being spoken by either, he came into the schoolroom,
shut the door, and moved close to her.  Once inside, the expression
of his face was no more discernible, by reason of the increasing
dusk of evening.

"I want to speak to you," he then said; "seriously--on a perhaps
unexpected subject, but one which is all the world to me--I don't
know what it may be to you, Miss Day."

No reply.

"Fancy, I have come to ask you if you will be my wife?"

As a person who has been idly amusing himself with rolling a
snowball might start at finding he had set in motion an avalanche,
so did Fancy start at these words from the vicar.  And in the dead
silence which followed them, the breathings of the man and of the
woman could be distinctly and separately heard; and there was this
difference between them--his respirations gradually grew quieter and
less rapid after the enunciation hers, from having been low and
regular, increased in quickness and force, till she almost panted.

"I cannot, I cannot, Mr. Maybold--I cannot!  Don't ask me!" she
said.

"Don't answer in a hurry!" he entreated.  "And do listen to me.
This is no sudden feeling on my part.  I have loved you for more
than six months!  Perhaps my late interest in teaching the children
here has not been so single-minded as it seemed.  You will
understand my motive--like me better, perhaps, for honestly telling
you that I have struggled against my emotion continually, because I
have thought that it was not well for me to love you!  But I
resolved to struggle no longer; I have examined the feeling; and the
love I bear you is as genuine as that I could bear any woman!  I see
your great charm; I respect your natural talents, and the refinement
they have brought into your nature--they are quite enough, and more
than enough for me!  They are equal to anything ever required of the
mistress of a quiet parsonage-house--the place in which I shall pass
my days, wherever it may be situated.  O Fancy, I have watched you,
criticized you even severely, brought my feelings to the light of
judgment, and still have found them rational, and such as any man
might have expected to be inspired with by a woman like you!  So
there is nothing hurried, secret, or untoward in my desire to do
this.  Fancy, will you marry me?"

No answer was returned.

"Don't refuse; don't," he implored.  "It would be foolish of you--I
mean cruel!  Of course we would not live here, Fancy.  I have had
for a long time the offer of an exchange of livings with a friend in
Yorkshire, but I have hitherto refused on account of my mother.
There we would go.  Your musical powers shall be still further
developed; you shall have whatever pianoforte you like; you shall
have anything, Fancy, anything to make you happy--pony-carriage,
flowers, birds, pleasant society; yes, you have enough in you for
any society, after a few months of travel with me!  Will you, Fancy,
marry me?"

Another pause ensued, varied only by the surging of the rain against
the window--panes, and then Fancy spoke, in a faint and broken
voice.

"Yes, I will," she said.

"God bless you, my own!"  He advanced quickly, and put his arm out
to embrace her.  She drew back hastily.  "No no, not now!" she said
in an agitated whisper.  "There are things;--but the temptation is,
O, too strong, and I can't resist it I can't tell you now, but I
must tell you!  Don't, please, don't come near me now!  I want to
think, I can scarcely get myself used to the idea of what I have
promised yet."  The next minute she turned to a desk, buried her
face in her hands, and burst into a hysterical fit of weeping.  "O,
leave me to myself!" she sobbed; "leave me!  O, leave me!"

"Don't be distressed; don't, dearest!"  It was with visible
difficulty that he restrained himself from approaching her.  "You
shall tell me at your leisure what it is that grieves you so; I am
happy--beyond all measure happy!--at having your simple promise."

"And do go and leave me now!"

"But I must not, in justice to you, leave for a minute, until you
are yourself again."

"There then," she said, controlling her emotion, and standing up; "I
am not disturbed now."

He reluctantly moved towards the door.  "Good-bye!" he murmured
tenderly.  "I'll come to-morrow about this time."



CHAPTER VII:  SECOND THOUGHTS



The next morning the vicar rose early.  The first thing he did was
to write a long and careful letter to his friend in Yorkshire.
Then, eating a little breakfast, he crossed the meadows in the
direction of Casterbridge, bearing his letter in his pocket, that he
might post it at the town office, and obviate the loss of one day in
its transmission that would have resulted had he left it for the
foot-post through the village.

It was a foggy morning, and the trees shed in noisy water-drops the
moisture they had collected from the thick air, an acorn
occasionally falling from its cup to the ground, in company with the
drippings.  In the meads, sheets of spiders'-web, almost opaque with
wet, hung in folds over the fences, and the falling leaves appeared
in every variety of brown, green, and yellow hue.

A low and merry whistling was heard on the highway he was
approaching, then the light footsteps of a man going in the same
direction as himself.  On reaching the junction of his path with the
road, the vicar beheld Dick Dewy's open and cheerful face.  Dick
lifted his hat, and the vicar came out into the highway that Dick
was pursuing.

"Good-morning, Dewy.  How well you are looking!" said Mr. Maybold.

"Yes, sir, I am well--quite well!  I am going to Casterbridge now,
to get Smart's collar; we left it there Saturday to be repaired."

"I am going to Casterbridge, so we'll walk together," the vicar
said.  Dick gave a hop with one foot to put himself in step with Mr.
Maybold, who proceeded:  "I fancy I didn't see you at church
yesterday, Dewy.  Or were you behind the pier?"

"No; I went to Charmley.  Poor John Dunford chose me to be one of
his bearers a long time before he died, and yesterday was the
funeral.  Of course I couldn't refuse, though I should have liked
particularly to have been at home as 'twas the day of the new
music."

"Yes, you should have been.  The musical portion of the service was
successful--very successful indeed; and what is more to the purpose,
no ill-feeling whatever was evinced by any of the members of the old
choir.  They joined in the singing with the greatest good-will."

"'Twas natural enough that I should want to be there, I suppose,"
said Dick, smiling a private smile; "considering who the organ--
player was."

At this the vicar reddened a little, and said, "Yes, yes," though
not at all comprehending Dick's true meaning, who, as he received no
further reply, continued hesitatingly, and with another smile
denoting his pride as a lover -

  "I suppose you know what I mean, sir?  You've heard about me and--
Miss Day?"

The red in Maybold's countenance went away:  he turned and looked
Dick in the face.

"No," he said constrainedly, "I've heard nothing whatever about you
and Miss Day."

"Why, she's my sweetheart, and we are going to be married next
Midsummer.  We are keeping it rather close just at present, because
'tis a good many months to wait; but it is her father's wish that we
don't marry before, and of course we must submit.  But the time 'ill
soon slip along."

"Yes, the time will soon slip along--Time glides away every day--
yes."

Maybold said these words, but he had no idea of what they were.  He
was conscious of a cold and sickly thrill throughout him; and all he
reasoned was this that the young creature whose graces had
intoxicated him into making the most imprudent resolution of his
life, was less an angel than a woman.

"You see, sir," continued the ingenuous Dick, "'twill be better in
one sense.  I shall by that time be the regular manager of a branch
o' father's business, which has very much increased lately, and
business, which we think of starting elsewhere.  It has very much
increased lately, and we expect next year to keep a' extra couple of
horses.  We've already our eye on one--brown as a berry, neck like a
rainbow, fifteen hands, and not a gray hair in her--offered us at
twenty-five want a crown.  And to kip pace with the times I have had
some cards prented and I beg leave to hand you one, sir."

"Certainly," said the vicar, mechanically taking the card that Dick
offered him.

"I turn in here by Grey's Bridge," said Dick.  "I suppose you go
straight on and up town?"

"Yes."

"Good-morning, sir."

"Good-morning, Dewy."

Maybold stood still upon the bridge, holding the card as it had been
put into his hand, and Dick's footsteps died away towards Durnover
Mill.  The vicar's first voluntary action was to read the card


DEWY AND SON,
TRANTERS AND HAULIERS,
MELLSTOCK.

NB.--FURNITURE, COALS, POTATOES, LIVE AND DEAD STOCK, REMOVED TO ANY
DISTANCE ON THE SHORTEST NOTICE.


Mr. Maybold leant over the parapet of the bridge and looked into the
river.  He saw--without heeding--how the water came rapidly from
beneath the arches, glided down a little steep, then spread itself
over a pool in which dace, trout, and minnows sported at ease among
the long green locks of weed that lay heaving and sinking with their
roots towards the current.  At the end of ten minutes spent leaning
thus, he drew from his pocket the letter to his friend, tore it
deliberately into such minute fragments that scarcely two syllables
remained in juxtaposition, and sent the whole handful of shreds
fluttering into the water.  Here he watched them eddy, dart, and
turn, as they were carried downwards towards the ocean and gradually
disappeared from his view.  Finally he moved off, and pursued his
way at a rapid pace back again to Mellstock Vicarage.

Nerving himself by a long and intense effort, he sat down in his
study and wrote as follows:


"DEAR MISS DAY,--The meaning of your words, 'the temptation is too
strong,' of your sadness and your tears, has been brought home to me
by an accident.  I know to-day what I did not know yesterday--that
you are not a free woman.

"Why did you not tell me--why didn't you?  Did you suppose I knew?
No.  Had I known, my conduct in coming to you as I did would have
been reprehensible.

"But I don't chide you!  Perhaps no blame attaches to you--I can't
tell.  Fancy, though my opinion of you is assailed and disturbed in
a way which cannot be expressed, I love you still, and my word to
you holds good yet.  But will you, in justice to an honest man who
relies upon your word to him, consider whether, under the
circumstances, you can honourably forsake him?--Yours ever
sincerely,

"ARTHUR MAYBOLD."


He rang the bell.  "Tell Charles to take these copybooks and this
note to the school at once."

The maid took the parcel and the letter, and in a few minutes a boy
was seen to leave the vicarage gate, with the one under his arm, and
the other in his hand.  The vicar sat with his hand to his brow,
watching the lad as he descended Church Lane and entered the
waterside path which intervened between that spot and the school.

Here he was met by another boy, and after a free salutation and
pugilistic frisk had passed between the two, the second boy came on
his way to the vicarage, and the other vanished out of sight.

The boy came to the door, and a note for Mr. Maybold was brought in.

He knew the writing.  Opening the envelope with an unsteady hand, he
read the subjoined words:


"DEAR MR. MAYBOLD,--I have been thinking seriously and sadly through
the whole of the night of the question you put to me last evening
and of my answer.  That answer, as an honest woman, I had no right
to give.

"It is my nature--perhaps all women's--to love refinement of mind
and manners; but even more than this, to be ever fascinated with the
idea of surroundings more elegant and pleasing than those which have
been customary.  And you praised me, and praise is life to me.  It
was alone my sensations at these things which prompted my reply.
Ambition and vanity they would be called; perhaps they are so.

"After this explanation I hope you will generously allow me to
withdraw the answer I too hastily gave.

"And one more request.  To keep the meeting of last night, and all
that passed between us there, for ever a secret.  Were it to become
known, it would utterly blight the happiness of a trusting and
generous man, whom I love still, and shall love always.--Yours
sincerely,

"FANCY DAY.


The last written communication that ever passed from the vicar to
Fancy, was a note containing these words only:

"Tell him everything; it is best.  He will forgive you."




PART THE FIFTH:  CONCLUSION




CHAPTER I:  'THE KNOT THERE'S NO UNTYING'



The last day of the story is dated just subsequent to that point in
the development of the seasons when country people go to bed among
nearly naked trees, are lulled to sleep by a fall of rain, and awake
next morning among green ones; when the landscape appears
embarrassed with the sudden weight and brilliancy of its leaves;
when the night-jar comes and strikes up for the summer his tune of
one note; when the apple-trees have bloomed, and the roads and
orchard-grass become spotted with fallen petals; when the faces of
the delicate flowers are darkened, and their heads weighed down, by
the throng of honey-bees, which increase their humming till humming
is too mild a term for the all-pervading sound; and when cuckoos,
blackbirds, and sparrows, that have hitherto been merry and
respectful neighbours, become noisy and persistent intimates.

The exterior of Geoffrey Day's house in Yalbury Wood appeared
exactly as was usual at that season, but a frantic barking of the
dogs at the back told of unwonted movements somewhere within.
Inside the door the eyes beheld a gathering, which was a rarity
indeed for the dwelling of the solitary wood-steward and keeper.

About the room were sitting and standing, in various gnarled
attitudes, our old acquaintance, grandfathers James and William, the
tranter, Mr. Penny, two or three children, including Jimmy and
Charley, besides three or four country ladies and gentlemen from a
greater distance who do not require any distinction by name.
Geoffrey was seen and heard stamping about the outhouse and among
the bushes of the garden, attending to details of daily routine
before the proper time arrived for their performance, in order that
they might be off his hands for the day.  He appeared with his
shirt-sleeves rolled up; his best new nether garments, in which he
had arrayed himself that morning, being temporarily disguised under
a weekday apron whilst these proceedings were in operation.  He
occasionally glanced at the hives in passing, to see if his wife's
bees were swarming, ultimately rolling down his shirt-sleeves and
going indoors, talking to tranter Dewy whilst buttoning the
wristbands, to save time; next going upstairs for his best
waistcoat, and coming down again to make another remark whilst
buttoning that, during the time looking fixedly in the tranter's
face as if he were a looking-glass.

The furniture had undergone attenuation to an alarming extent, every
duplicate piece having been removed, including the clock by Thomas
Wood; Ezekiel Saunders being at last left sole referee in matters of
time.

Fancy was stationary upstairs, receiving her layers of clothes and
adornments, and answering by short fragments of laughter which had
more fidgetiness than mirth in them, remarks that were made from
time to time by Mrs. Dewy and Mrs. Penny, who were assisting her at
the toilet, Mrs. Day having pleaded a queerness in her head as a
reason for shutting herself up in an inner bedroom for the whole
morning.  Mrs. Penny appeared with nine corkscrew curls on each side
of her temples, and a back comb stuck upon her crown like a castle
on a steep.

The conversation just now going on was concerning the banns, the
last publication of which had been on the Sunday previous.

"And how did they sound?" Fancy subtly inquired.

"Very beautiful indeed," said Mrs. Penny.  "I never heard any sound
better."

"But HOW?"

"O, SO natural and elegant, didn't they, Reuben!" she cried, through
the chinks of the unceiled floor, to the tranter downstairs.

"What's that?" said the tranter, looking up inquiringly at the floor
above him for an answer.

"Didn't Dick and Fancy sound well when they were called home in
church last Sunday?" came downwards again in Mrs. Penny's voice.

"Ay, that they did, my sonnies!--especially the first time.  There
was a terrible whispering piece of work in the congregation, wasn't
there, neighbour Penny?" said the tranter, taking up the thread of
conversation on his own account and, in order to be heard in the
room above, speaking very loud to Mr. Penny, who sat at the distance
of three feet from him, or rather less.

"I never can mind seeing such a whispering as there was," said Mr.
Penny, also loudly, to the room above.  "And such sorrowful envy on
the maidens' faces; really, I never did see such envy as there was!"

Fancy's lineaments varied in innumerable little flushes, and her
heart palpitated innumerable little tremors of pleasure.  "But
perhaps," she said, with assumed indifference, "it was only because
no religion was going on just then?"

"O, no; nothing to do with that.  'Twas because of your high
standing in the parish.  It was just as if they had one and all
caught Dick kissing and coling ye to death, wasn't it, Mrs. Dewy?"

"Ay; that 'twas."

"How people will talk about one's doings!" Fancy exclaimed.

"Well, if you make songs about yourself, my dear, you can't blame
other people for singing 'em."

"Mercy me! how shall I go through it?" said the young lady again,
but merely to those in the bedroom, with a breathing of a kind
between a sigh and a pant, round shining eyes, and warm face.

"O, you'll get through it well enough, child," said Mrs. Dewy
placidly.  "The edge of the performance is took off at the calling
home; and when once you get up to the chancel end o' the church, you
feel as saucy as you please.  I'm sure I felt as brave as a sodger
all through the deed--though of course I dropped my face and looked
modest, as was becoming to a maid.  Mind you do that, Fancy."

"And I walked into the church as quiet as a lamb, I'm sure,"
subjoined Mrs. Penny.  "There, you see Penny is such a little small
man, But certainly, I was flurried in the inside o' me.  Well,
thinks I, 'tis to be, and here goes!  And do you do the same:  say,
''Tis to be, and here goes!'"

"Is there such wonderful virtue in ''Tis to be, and here goes!'"
inquired Fancy.

"Wonderful!  'Twill carry a body through it all from wedding to
churching, if you only let it out with spirit enough."

"Very well, then," said Fancy, blushing.  "'Tis to be, and here
goes!"

"That's a girl for a husband!" said Mrs. Dewy.

"I do hope he'll come in time!" continued the bride-elect, inventing
a new cause of affright, now that the other was demolished.

"'Twould be a thousand pities if he didn't come, now you he so
brave," said Mrs. Penny.

Grandfather James, having overheard some of these remarks, said
downstairs with mischievous loudness--"I've known some would-be
weddings when the men didn't come."

"They've happened not to come, before now, certainly," said Mr.
Penny, cleaning one of the glasses of his spectacles.

"O, do hear what they are saying downstairs," whispered Fancy.
"Hush, hush!"

She listened.

"They have, haven't they, Geoffrey?" continued grandfather James, as
Geoffrey entered.

"Have what?" said Geoffrey.

"The men have been known not to come."

"That they have," said the keeper.

"Ay; I've knowed times when the wedding had to be put off through
his not appearing, being tired of the woman.  And another case I
knowed was when the man was catched in a man-trap crossing Oaker's
Wood, and the three months had run out before he got well, and the
banns had to be published over again."

"How horrible!" said Fancy.

"They only say it on purpose to tease 'ee, my dear," said Mrs. Dewy.

"'Tis quite sad to think what wretched shifts poor maids have been
put to," came again from downstairs.  "Ye should hear Clerk Wilkins,
my brother-law, tell his experiences in marrying couples these last
thirty year:  sometimes one thing, sometimes another--'tis quite
heart-rending--enough to make your hair stand on end."

"Those things don't happen very often, I know," said Fancy, with
smouldering uneasiness.

"Well, really 'tis time Dick was here," said the tranter.

"Don't keep on at me so, grandfather James and Mr. Dewy, and all you
down there!" Fancy broke out, unable to endure any longer.  "I am
sure I shall die, or do something, if you do!"

"Never you hearken to these old chaps, Miss Day!" cried Nat
Callcome, the best man, who had just entered, and threw his voice
upward through the chinks of the floor as the others had done.
"'Tis all right; Dick's coming on like a wild feller; he'll be here
in a minute.  The hive o' bees his mother gie'd en for his new
garden swarmed jist as he was starting, and he said, "I can't afford
to lose a stock o' bees; no, that I can't, though I fain would; and
Fancy wouldn't wish it on any account."  So he jist stopped to ting
to 'em and shake 'em."

"A genuine wise man," said Geoffrey.

"To be sure, what a day's work we had yesterday!" Mr. Callcome
continued, lowering his voice as if it were not necessary any longer
to include those in the room above among his audience, and selecting
a remote corner of his best clean handkerchief for wiping his face.
"To be sure!"

"Things so heavy, I suppose," said Geoffrey, as if reading through
the chimney-window from the far end of the vista.

"Ay," said Nat, looking round the room at points from which
furniture had been removed.  "And so awkward to carry, too.  'Twas
ath'art and across Dick's garden; in and out Dick's door; up and
down Dick's stairs; round and round Dick's chammers till legs were
worn to stumps:  and Dick is so particular, too.  And the stores of
victuals and drink that lad has laid in:  why, 'tis enough for
Noah's ark!  I'm sure I never wish to see a choicer half-dozen of
hams than he's got there in his chimley; and the cider I tasted was
a very pretty drop, indeed;--none could desire a prettier cider."

"They be for the love and the stalled ox both, Ah, the greedy
martels!" said grandfather James.

"Well, may-be they be.  Surely," says I, "that couple between 'em
have heaped up so much furniture and victuals, that anybody would
think they were going to take hold the big end of married life
first, and begin wi' a grown-up family.  Ah, what a bath of heat we
two chaps were in, to be sure, a-getting that furniture in order!"

"I do so wish the room below was ceiled," said Fancy, as the
dressing went on; "we can hear all they say and do down there."

"Hark!  Who's that?" exclaimed a small pupil-teacher, who also
assisted this morning, to her great delight.  She ran half-way down
the stairs, and peeped round the banister.  "O, you should, you
should, you should!" she exclaimed, scrambling up to the room again.

"What?" said Fancy.

"See the bridesmaids!  They've just a come! 'Tis wonderful, really!
'tis wonderful how muslin can be brought to it.  There, they don't
look a bit like themselves, but like some very rich sisters o'
theirs that nobody knew they had!"

"Make 'em come up to me, make 'em come up!" cried Fancy
ecstatically; and the four damsels appointed, namely, Miss Susan
Dewy, Miss Bessie Dewy, Miss Vashti Sniff, and Miss Mercy Onmey,
surged upstairs, and floated along the passage.

"I wish Dick would come!" was again the burden of Fancy.

The same instant a small twig and flower from the creeper outside
the door flew in at the open window, and a masculine voice said,
"Ready, Fancy dearest?"

"There he is, he is!" cried Fancy, tittering spasmodically, and
breathing as it were for the first time that morning.

The bridesmaids crowded to the window and turned their heads in the
direction pointed out, at which motion eight earrings all swung as
one: --not looking at Dick because they particularly wanted to see
him, but with an important sense of their duty as obedient ministers
of the will of that apotheosised being--the Bride.

"He looks very taking!" said Miss Vashti Sniff, a young lady who
blushed cream-colour and wore yellow bonnet ribbons.

Dick was advancing to the door in a painfully new coat of shining
cloth, primrose-coloured waistcoat, hat of the same painful style of
newness, and with an extra quantity of whiskers shaved off his face,
and hair cut to an unwonted shortness in honour of the occasion.

"Now, I'll run down," said Fancy, looking at herself over her
shoulder in the glass, and flitting off.

"O Dick!" she exclaimed, "I am so glad you are come!  I knew you
would, of course, but I thought, Oh if you shouldn't!"

"Not come, Fancy!  Het or wet, blow or snow, here come I to-day!
Why, what's possessing your little soul?  You never used to mind
such things a bit."

"Ah, Mr. Dick, I hadn't hoisted my colours and committed myself
then!" said Fancy.

"'Tis a pity I can't marry the whole five of ye!" said Dick,
surveying them all round.

"Heh-heh-heh!" laughed the four bridesmaids, and Fancy privately
touched Dick and smoothed him down behind his shoulder, as if to
assure herself that he was there in flesh and blood as her own
property.

"Well, whoever would have thought such a thing?" said Dick, taking
off his hat, sinking into a chair, and turning to the elder members
of the company.

The latter arranged their eyes and lips to signify that in their
opinion nobody could have thought such a thing, whatever it was.

"That my bees should ha' swarmed just then, of all times and
seasons!" continued Dick, throwing a comprehensive glance like a net
over the whole auditory.  "And 'tis a fine swarm, too:  I haven't
seen such a fine swarm for these ten years."

"A' excellent sign," said Mrs. Penny, from the depths of experience.
"A' excellent sign."

"I am glad everything seems so right," said Fancy with a breath of
relief.

"And so am I," said the four bridesmaids with much sympathy.

"Well, bees can't be put off," observed the inharmonious grandfather
James.  "Marrying a woman is a thing you can do at any moment; but a
swarm o' bees won't come for the asking."

Dick fanned himself with his hat.  "I can't think," he said
thoughtfully, "whatever 'twas I did to offend Mr. Maybold, a man I
like so much too.  He rather took to me when he came first, and used
to say he should like to see me married, and that he'd marry me,
whether the young woman I chose lived in his parish or no.  I just
hinted to him of it when I put in the banns, but he didn't seem to
take kindly to the notion now, and so I said no more.  I wonder how
it was."

"I wonder!" said Fancy, looking into vacancy with those beautiful
eyes of hers--too refined and beautiful for a tranter's wife; but,
perhaps, not too good.

"Altered his mind, as folks will, I suppose," said the tranter.
"Well, my sonnies, there'll he a good strong party looking at us to-
day as we go along."

"And the body of the church," said Geoffrey, "will be lined with
females, and a row of young fellers' heads, as far down as the eyes,
will be noticed just above the sills of the chancel-winders."

"Ay, you've been through it twice," said Reuben, "and well mid
know."

"I can put up with it for once," said Dick, "or twice either, or a
dozen times."

"O Dick!" said Fancy reproachfully.

"Why, dear, that's nothing,--only just a bit of a flourish.  You be
as nervous as a cat to-day."

"And then, of course, when 'tis all over," continued the tranter,
"we shall march two and two round the parish."

"Yes, sure," said Mr. Penny:  "two and two:  every man hitched up to
his woman, 'a b'lieve."

"I never can make a show of myself in that way!" said Fancy, looking
at Dick to ascertain if he could.

"I'm agreed to anything you and the company like, my dear!" said Mr.
Richard Dewy heartily.

"Why, we did when we were married, didn't we, Ann?" said the
tranter; "and so do everybody, my sonnies."

"And so did we," said Fancy's father.

"And so did Penny and I," said Mrs. Penny:  "I wore my best Bath
clogs, I remember, and Penny was cross because it made me look so
tall."

"And so did father and mother," said Miss Mercy Onmey.

"And I mean to, come next Christmas!" said Nat the groomsman
vigorously, and looking towards the person of Miss Vashti Sniff.

"Respectable people don't nowadays," said Fancy.  "Still, since poor
mother did, I will."

"Ay," resumed the tranter, "'twas on a White Tuesday when I
committed it.  Mellstock Club walked the same day, and we new-
married folk went a-gaying round the parish behind 'em.  Everybody
used to wear something white at Whitsuntide in them days.  My
sonnies, I've got the very white trousers that I wore, at home in
box now, Ha'n't I, Ann?"

"You had till I cut 'em up for Jimmy," said Mrs. Dewy.

"And we ought, by rights, after doing this parish, to go round
Higher and Lower Mellstock, and call at Viney's, and so work our way
hither again across He'th," said Mr. Penny, recovering scent of the
matter in hand.  "Dairyman Viney is a very respectable man, and so
is Farmer Kex, and we ought to show ourselves to them."

"True," said the tranter, "we ought to go round Mellstock to do the
thing well.  We shall form a very striking object walking along in
rotation, good-now, neighbours?"

"That we shall:  a proper pretty sight for the nation," said Mrs.
Penny.

"Hullo!" said the tranter, suddenly catching sight of a singular
human figure standing in the doorway, and wearing a long smock-frock
of pillow-case cut and of snowy whiteness.  "Why, Leaf! whatever
dost thou do here?"

"I've come to know if so be I can come to the wedding--hee-hee!"
said Leaf in a voice of timidity.

"Now, Leaf," said the tranter reproachfully, "you know we don't want
'ee here to-day:  we've got no room for ye, Leaf."

"Thomas Leaf, Thomas Leaf, fie upon ye for prying!" said old
William.

"I know I've got no head, but I thought, if I washed and put on a
clane shirt and smock-frock, I might just call," said Leaf; turning
away disappointed and trembling.

"Poor feller!" said the tranter, turning to Geoffrey.  "Suppose we
must let en come?  His looks are rather against en, and he is
terrible silly; but 'a have never been in jail, and 'a won't do no
harm."

Leaf looked with gratitude at the tranter for these praises, and
then anxiously at Geoffrey, to see what effect they would have in
helping his cause.

"Ay, let en come," said Geoffrey decisively.  "Leaf, th'rt welcome,
'st know;" and Leaf accordingly remained.

They were now all ready for leaving the house, and began to form a
procession in the following order:  Fancy and her father, Dick and
Susan Dewy, Nat Callcome and Vashti Sniff, Ted Waywood and Mercy
Onmey, and Jimmy and Bessie Dewy.  These formed the executive, and
all appeared in strict wedding attire.  Then came the tranter and
Mrs. Dewy, and last of all Mr. and Mrs. Penny;--the tranter
conspicuous by his enormous gloves, size eleven and three-quarters,
which appeared at a distance like boxing gloves bleached, and sat
rather awkwardly upon his brown hands; this hall-mark of
respectability having been set upon himself to-day (by Fancy's
special request) for the first time in his life.

"The proper way is for the bridesmaids to walk together," suggested
Fancy.

"What?  'Twas always young man and young woman, arm in crook, in my
time!" said Geoffrey, astounded.

"And in mine!" said the tranter.

"And in ours!" said Mr. and Mrs. Penny.

"Never heard o' such a thing as woman and woman!" said old William;
who, with grandfather James and Mrs. Day, was to stay at home.

"Whichever way you and the company like, my dear!" said Dick, who,
being on the point of securing his right to Fancy, seemed willing to
renounce all other rights in the world with the greatest pleasure
The decision was left to Fancy.

"Well, I think I'd rather have it the way mother had it," she said,
and the couples moved along under the trees, every man to his maid.

"Ah!" said grandfather James to grandfather William as they retired,
"I wonder which she thinks most about, Dick or her wedding raiment!"

"Well, 'tis their nature," said grandfather William.  "Remember the
words of the prophet Jeremiah:  'Can a maid forget her ornaments, or
a bride her attire?'"

Now among dark perpendicular firs, like the shafted columns of a
cathedral; now through a hazel copse, matted with primroses and wild
hyacinths; now under broad beeches in bright young leaves they
threaded their way into the high road over Yalbury Hill, which
dipped at that point directly into the village of Geoffrey Day's
parish; and in the space of a quarter of an hour Fancy found herself
to be Mrs. Richard Dewy, though, much to her surprise, feeling no
other than Fancy Day still.

On the circuitous return walk through the lanes and fields, amid
much chattering and laughter, especially when they came to stiles,
Dick discerned a brown spot far up a turnip field.

"Why, 'tis Enoch!" he said to Fancy.  "I thought I missed him at the
house this morning.  How is it he's left you?"

"He drank too much cider, and it got into his head, and they put him
in Weatherbury stocks for it.  Father was obliged to get somebody
else for a day or two, and Enoch hasn't had anything to do with the
woods since."

"We might ask him to call down to-night.  Stocks are nothing for
once, considering 'tis our wedding day."  The bridal party was
ordered to halt.

"Eno-o-o-o-ch!" cried Dick at the top of his voice.

"Y-a-a-a-a-a-as!" said Enoch from the distance.

"D'ye know who I be-e-e-e-e-e?"

"No-o-o-o-o-o-o!"

"Dick Dew-w-w-w-wy!"

"O-h-h-h-h-h!"

"Just a-ma-a-a-a-a-arried!"

"O-h-h-h-h-h!"

"This is my wife, Fa-a-a-a-a-ancy!" (holding her up to Enoch's view
as if she had been a nosegay.)

"O-h-h-h-h-h!"

"Will ye come across to the party to-ni-i-i-i-i-i-ight!"

"Ca-a-a-a-a-an't!"

"Why n-o-o-o-o-ot?"

"Don't work for the family no-o-o-o-ow!"

"Not nice of Master Enoch," said Dick, as they resumed their walk.

"You mustn't blame en," said Geoffrey; "the man's not hisself now;
he's in his morning frame of mind.  When he's had a gallon o' cider
or ale, or a pint or two of mead, the man's well enough, and his
manners be as good as anybody's in the kingdom."



CHAPTER II:  UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE



The point in Yalbury Wood which abutted on the end of Geoffrey Day's
premises was closed with an ancient tree, horizontally of enormous
extent, though having no great pretensions to height.  Many hundreds
of birds had been born amidst the boughs of this single tree; tribes
of rabbits and hares had nibbled at its bark from year to year;
quaint tufts of fungi had sprung from the cavities of its forks; and
countless families of moles and earthworms had crept about its
roots.  Beneath and beyond its shade spread a carefully-tended
grass-plot, its purpose being to supply a healthy exercise-ground
for young chickens and pheasants; the hens, their mothers, being
enclosed in coops placed upon the same green flooring.

All these encumbrances were now removed, and as the afternoon
advanced, the guests gathered on the spot, where music, dancing, and
the singing of songs went forward with great spirit throughout the
evening.  The propriety of every one was intense by reason of the
influence of Fancy, who, as an additional precaution in this
direction, had strictly charged her father and the tranter to
carefully avoid saying 'thee' and 'thou' in their conversation, on
the plea that those ancient words sounded so very humiliating to
persons of newer taste; also that they were never to be seen drawing
the back of the hand across the mouth after drinking--a local
English custom of extraordinary antiquity, but stated by Fancy to be
decidedly dying out among the better classes of society.

In addition to the local musicians present, a man who had a thorough
knowledge of the tambourine was invited from the village of Tantrum
Clangley,--a place long celebrated for the skill of its inhabitants
as performers on instruments of percussion.  These important members
of the assembly were relegated to a height of two or three feet from
the ground, upon a temporary erection of planks supported by
barrels.  Whilst the dancing progressed the older persons sat in a
group under the trunk of the tree,--the space being allotted to them
somewhat grudgingly by the young ones, who were greedy of
pirouetting room,--and fortified by a table against the heels of the
dancers.  Here the gaffers and gammers, whose dancing days were
over, told stories of great impressiveness, and at intervals
surveyed the advancing and retiring couples from the same retreat,
as people on shore might be supposed to survey a naval engagement in
the bay beyond; returning again to their tales when the pause was
over.  Those of the whirling throng, who, during the rests between
each figure, turned their eyes in the direction of these seated
ones, were only able to discover, on account of the music and
bustle, that a very striking circumstance was in course of
narration--denoted by an emphatic sweep of the hand, snapping of the
fingers, close of the lips, and fixed look into the centre of the
listener's eye for the space of a quarter of a minute, which raised
in that listener such a reciprocating working of face as to
sometimes make the distant dancers half wish to know what such an
interesting tale could refer to.

Fancy caused her looks to wear as much matronly expression as was
obtainable out of six hours' experience as a wife, in order that the
contrast between her own state of life and that of the unmarried
young women present might be duly impressed upon the company:
occasionally stealing glances of admiration at her left hand, but
this quite privately; for her ostensible bearing concerning the
matter was intended to show that, though she undoubtedly occupied
the most wondrous position in the eyes of the world that had ever
been attained, she was almost unconscious of the circumstance, and
that the somewhat prominent position in which that wonderfully-
emblazoned left hand was continually found to be placed, when
handing cups and saucers, knives, forks, and glasses, was quite the
result of accident.  As to wishing to excite envy in the bosoms of
her maiden companions, by the exhibition of the shining ring, every
one was to know it was quite foreign to the dignity of such an
experienced married woman.  Dick's imagination in the meantime was
far less capable of drawing so much wontedness from his new
condition.  He had been for two or three hours trying to feel
himself merely a newly-married man, but had been able to get no
further in the attempt than to realize that he was Dick Dewy, the
tranter's son, at a party given by Lord Wessex's head man-in-charge,
on the outlying Yalbury estate, dancing and chatting with Fancy Day.

Five country dances, including 'Haste to the Wedding,' two reels,
and three fragments of horn-pipes, brought them to the time for
supper, which, on account of the dampness of the grass from the
immaturity of the summer season, was spread indoors.  At the
conclusion of the meal Dick went out to put the horse in; and Fancy,
with the elder half of the four bridesmaids, retired upstairs to
dress for the journey to Dick's new cottage near Mellstock.

"How long will you be putting on your bonnet, Fancy?" Dick inquired
at the foot of the staircase.  Being now a man of business and
married, he was strong on the importance of time, and doubled the
emphasis of his words in conversing, and added vigour to his nods.

"Only a minute."

"How long is that?"

"Well, dear, five."

"Ah, sonnies!" said the tranter, as Dick retired, "'tis a talent of
the female race that low numbers should stand for high, more
especially in matters of waiting, matters of age, and matters of
money."

"True, true, upon my body," said Geoffrey.

"Ye spak with feeling, Geoffrey, seemingly."

"Anybody that d'know my experience might guess that."

"What's she doing now, Geoffrey?"

"Claning out all the upstairs drawers and cupboards, and dusting the
second-best chainey--a thing that's only done once a year.  'If
there's work to be done I must do it,' says she, 'wedding or no.'"

"'Tis my belief she's a very good woman at bottom."

"She's terrible deep, then."

Mrs. Penny turned round.  "Well, 'tis humps and hollers with the
best of us; but still and for all that, Dick and Fancy stand as fair
a chance of having a bit of sunsheen as any married pair in the
land."

"Ay, there's no gainsaying it."

Mrs. Dewy came up, talking to one person and looking at another.
"Happy, yes," she said.  "'Tis always so when a couple is so exactly
in tune with one another as Dick and she."

"When they be'n't too poor to have time to sing," said grandfather
James.

"I tell ye, neighbours, when the pinch comes," said the tranter:
"when the oldest daughter's boots be only a size less than her
mother's, and the rest o' the flock close behind her.  A sharp time
for a man that, my sonnies; a very sharp time!  Chanticleer's comb
is a-cut then, 'a believe."

"That's about the form o't," said Mr. Penny.  "That'll put the stuns
upon a man, when you must measure mother and daughter's lasts to
tell 'em apart."

"You've no cause to complain, Reuben, of such a close-coming flock,"
said Mrs. Dewy; "for ours was a straggling lot enough, God knows!"

"I d'know it, I d'know it," said the tranter.  "You be a well-enough
woman, Ann."

Mrs. Dewy put her mouth in the form of a smile, and put it back
again without smiling.

"And if they come together, they go together," said Mrs. Penny,
whose family had been the reverse of the tranter's; "and a little
money will make either fate tolerable.  And money can be made by our
young couple, I know."

"Yes, that it can!" said the impulsive voice of Leaf, who had
hitherto humbly admired the proceedings from a corner.  "It can be
done--all that's wanted is a few pounds to begin with.  That's all!
I know a story about it!"

"Let's hear thy story, Leaf;" said the tranter.  "I never knew you
were clever enough to tell a story.  Silence, all of ye!  Mr. Leaf
will tell a story."

"Tell your story, Thomas Leaf," said grandfather William in the tone
of a schoolmaster.

"Once," said the delighted Leaf; in an uncertain voice, "there was a
man who lived in a house!  Well, this man went thinking and thinking
night and day.  At last, he said to himself; as I might, 'If I had
only ten pound, I'd make a fortune.'  At last by hook or by crook,
behold he got the ten pounds!"

"Only think of that!" said Nat Callcome satirically.

"Silence!" said the tranter.

"Well, now comes the interesting part of the story!  In a little
time he made that ten pounds twenty.  Then a little time after that
he doubled it, and made it forty.  Well, he went on, and a good
while after that he made it eighty, and on to a hundred.  Well, by-
and-by he made it two hundred!  Well, you'd never believe it, but--
he went on and made it four hundred!  He went on, and what did he
do?  Why, he made it eight hundred!  Yes, he did," continued Leaf;
in the highest pitch of excitement, bringing down his fist upon his
knee with such force that he quivered with the pain; "yes, and he
went on and made it A THOUSAND!"

"Hear, hear!" said the tranter.  "Better than the history of
England, my sonnies!"

"Thank you for your story, Thomas Leaf," said grandfather William;
and then Leaf gradually sank into nothingness again.

Amid a medley of laughter, old shoes, and elder-wine, Dick and his
bride took their departure, side by side in the excellent new
spring-cart which the young tranter now possessed.  The moon was
just over the full, rendering any light from lamps or their own
beauties quite unnecessary to the pair.  They drove slowly along
Yalbury Bottom, where the road passed between two copses.  Dick was
talking to his companion.

"Fancy," he said, "why we are so happy is because there is such full
confidence between us.  Ever since that time you confessed to that
little flirtation with Shiner by the river (which was really no
flirtation at all), I have thought how artless and good you must be
to tell me o' such a trifling thing, and to be so frightened about
it as you were.  It has won me to tell you my every deed and word
since then.  We'll have no secrets from each other, darling, will we
ever?--no secret at all."

"None from to-day," said Fancy.  "Hark! what's that?"

From a neighbouring thicket was suddenly heard to issue in a loud,
musical, and liquid voice -

"Tippiwit! swe-e-et! ki-ki-ki!  Come hither, come hither, come
hither!"

"O, 'tis the nightingale," murmured she, and thought of a secret she
would never tell.



Footnotes:

{1} This, a local expression, must be a corruption of something less
questionable.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Under the Greenwood Tree, by Hardy

