For several minutes **** 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 **** to Smart, in an echo of the same voice.
"Th'st hauled her back, I suppose?" Reuben inquired peaceably.
"Yes," said ****, 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, ****. That there maid is taking up thy thoughts more than's good for thee, my sonny. Thou'rt never happy now unless th'rt ****** thyself miserable about her in one way or another."
"I don't know about that, father," said **** 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, ****; very sensible indeed."
**** 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 ****** 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."
**** 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 ****, "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, ****, 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 ****.
"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 **** 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, **** 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.
