"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 d.i.c.k. "Now, Fancy, will you be my wife?"

"Do you know, d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k'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. d.i.c.k looked expectantly at the ripe tint of her delicate mouth, waiting for what was coming forth.

"Yes--if father will let me."

d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k drew back a little.

"d.i.c.k, d.i.c.k, kiss me and let me go instantly!--here's somebody coming!"

she whisperingly exclaimed.

Half an hour afterwards d.i.c.k emerged from the inn, and if Fancy's lips had been real cherries probably d.i.c.k'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 d.i.c.k under the fifth rib at the same time. "This will never do, upon my life, Master Dewy! calling for tay for a feymel pa.s.senger, and then going in and sitting down and having some too, and biding such a fine long time!"

"But surely you know?" said d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k, 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 a.s.sisted into the vehicle, and the newly affianced youth and maiden pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s at every step the pa.s.ser 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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sion an ever-increasing freshness on Fancy's part, whilst, whether from these accessories or not, d.i.c.k'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."