“True,” said Jacob Smallbury, deepening his thoughts to a profounder view of the subject. “ ’Tis a thought to look at, that ye might have been worse; but even as you be, ’tis a very bad affliction for ’ee, Joseph. For ye see, shepherd, though ’tis very well for a woman, dang it all, ’tis awkward for a man like him, poor feller?”
“ ’Tis—’tis,” said Gabriel, recovering from a meditation. “Yes, very awkward for the man.”
“Ay, and he’s very timid, too,” observed Jan Coggan. “Once he had been working late at Yalbury Bottom, and had had a drap of drink, and lost his way as he was coming home-along through Yalbury Wood, didn’t ye, Master Poorgrass?”
“No, no, no; not that story!” expostulated the modest man, forcing a laugh to bury his concern.
“—And so ’a lost himself quite,” continued Mr. Coggan, with an impassive face, implying that a true narrative, like time and tide, must run its course and would respect no man. “And as he was coming along in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to find his way out of the trees nohow, ’a cried out, ‘Man-a-lost! man-a-lost!’ A owl in a tree happened to be crying ‘Whoo-whoo-whoo!’ as owls do, you know, shepherd” (Gabriel nodded), “and Joseph, all in a tremble, said, ‘Joseph Poorgrass, of Weatherbury, sir!’ ”
“No, no, now—that’s too much!” said the timid man, becoming a man of brazen courage all of a sudden. “I didn’t say sir. I’ll take my oath I didn’t say ‘Joseph Poorgrass o’ Weatherbury, sir.’ No, no; what’s right is right, and I never said sir to the bird, knowing very well that no man of a gentleman’s rank would be hollering there at that time o’ night. ‘Joseph Poorgrass of Weatherbury,’—that’s every word I said, and I shouldn’t ha’ said that if ’t hadn’t been for Keeper Day’s metheglin … There, ’twas a merciful thing it ended where it did.”
The question of which was right being tacitly waived by the company, Jan went on meditatively:—
“And he’s the fearfullest man, bain’t ye, Joseph? Ay, another time ye were lost by Lambing-Down Gate, weren’t ye, Joseph?”
“I was,” replied Poorgrass, as if there were some conditions too serious even for modesty to remember itself under, this being one.
“Yes; that were the middle of the night, too. The gate would not open, try how he would, and knowing there was the Devil’s hand in it, he kneeled down.”
“Ay,” said Joseph, acquiring confidence from the warmth of the fire, the cider, and a perception of the narrative capabilities of the experience alluded to. “My heart died within me, that time; but I kneeled down and said the Lord’s Prayer, and then the Belief right through, and then the Ten Commandments, in earnest prayer. But no, the gate wouldn’t open; and then I went on with Dearly Beloved Brethren, and, thinks I, this makes four, and ’tis all I know out of book, and if this don’t do it nothing will, and I’m a lost man. Well, when I got to Saying After Me, I rose from my knees and found the gate would open—yes, neighbours, the gate opened the same as ever.”
A meditation on the obvious inference was indulged in by all, and during its continuance each directed his vision into the ashpit, which glowed like a desert in the tropics under a vertical sun, shaping their eyes long and liny, partly because of the light, partly from the depth of the subject discussed.
Gabriel broke the silence. “What sort of a place is this to live at, and what sort of a mis’ess is she to work under?” Gabriel’s bosom thrilled gently as he thus slipped under the notice of the assembly the inner-most subject of his heart.
“We d’ know little of her—nothing. She only showed herself a few days ago. Her uncle was took bad, and the doctor was called with his world-wide skill; but he couldn’t save the man. As I take it, she’s going to keep on the farm.”
“That’s about the shape o’t, ’a b’lieve,” said Jan Coggan. “Ay, ’tis a very good family. I’d as soon be under ’em as under one here and there. Her uncle was a very fair sort of man. Did ye know un, shepherd—a bachelor-man?”
“Not at all.”
“I used to go to his house a-courting my first wife, Charlotte, who was his dairymaid. Well, a very good-hearted man were Farmer Everdene, and I being a respectable young fellow was allowed to call and see her and drink as much ale as I liked, but not to carry away any—outside my skin I mane of course.”
“Ay, ay, Jan Coggan; we know yer maning.”
“And so you see ’twas beautiful ale, and I wished to value his kindness as much as I could, and not to be so ill-mannered as to drink only a thimbleful, which would have been insulting the man’s generosity—”
“True, Master Coggan, ’twould so,” corroborated Mark Clark.
“—And so I used to eat a lot of salt fish afore going, and then by the time I got there I were as dry as a lime-basket—so thorough dry that that ale would slip down—ah, ’twould slip down sweet! Happy times! Heavenly times! Such lovely drunks as I used to have at that house! You can mind, Jacob? You used to go wi’ me sometimes.”
“I can—I can,” said Jacob. “That one, too, that we had at Buck’s Head on a White Monday was a pretty tipple.”
“ ’Twas. But for a wet of the better class, that brought you no nearer to the horned man than you were afore you begun, there was none like those in Farmer Everdene’s kitchen. Not a single damn allowed; no, not a bare poor one, even at the most cheerful moment
