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This brought them by way of Great Hintock; and passing the church-yard they observed, as they talked, a motionless figure standing by the gate. "I think it was Marty South," said the hollow-turner, parenthetically. "I think 'twas; 'a was always a lonely maid," said Upjohn. And they passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more. It was Marty, as they had supposed.
That's all it was and I'm sorry I dragged you out." "Well," said the hollow-turner, "here be we six mile from home, and night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to our name. I say, we'll have a mossel and a drop o' summat to strengthen our nerves afore we vamp all the way back again? My throat's as dry as a kex. What d'ye say so's?"
Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your mis'ess could lead you," the hollow-turner remarked. "She's got him quite tame. But how long 'twill last I can't say. I happened to be setting a wire on the top of my garden one night when he met her on the other side of the hedge; and the way she queened it, and fenced, and kept that poor feller at a distance, was enough to freeze yer blood.
"What women do know nowadays!" observed the hollow-turner. "You can't deceive 'em as you could in my time." "What they knowed then was not small," said John Upjohn. "Always a good deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife that is now, the skilfulness that she would show in keeping me on her pretty side as she walked was beyond all belief.
After supper they played cards, Bawtree and the hollow-turner monopolizing the new packs for an interminable game, in which a lump of chalk was incessantly used a game those two always played wherever they were, taking a solitary candle and going to a private table in a corner with the mien of persons bent on weighty matters.
Perhaps you've noticed that she's got a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?" "I can't say I've noticed it particular much," said the hollow-turner, blandly. "Well," continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, "she has. All women under the sun be prettier one side than t'other. And, as I was saying, the pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were unending!
Every now and then the comparatively few remarks of the players at the round game were harshly intruded on by the measured jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner from the back of the room: "And I' will hold' a wa'-ger with you' That all' these marks' are thirt'-y two!"
Others now arrived, among them Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner, and tea went off very well. Grace's disposition to make the best of everything, and to wink at deficiencies in Winterborne's menage, was so uniform and persistent that he suspected her of seeing even more deficiencies than he was aware of.
Fitzpiers on her return, among them being the dairyman, Farmer Bawtree, and the master-blacksmith from Great Hintock; also the cooper, the hollow-turner, the exciseman, and some others, with their wives, who lived hard by.
"He must be a curious young man," mused the hollow-turner. "He must," said Timothy Tangs. "Nonsense," said Mr. Melbury, authoritatively, "he's only a gentleman fond of science and philosophy and poetry, and, in fact, every kind of knowledge; and being lonely here, he passes his time in making such matters his hobby."
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