`And then I went into Griffin's to hae my boots hobbed, and then I went to Rigg's batty-cake shop, and asked 'em for a penneth of the cheapest and nicest stales, that were all but blue-mouldy, but not quite. And whilst I was chawing 'em down I walked on and seed a clock with a face as big as a baking trendle--'
`But that's nothing to do with mistress!'
`I'm coming to that, if you'll leave me alone, Mister Oak!' remonstrated Cainy. `If you excites me, perhaps you'll bring on my cough and then I shan't be able to tell ye nothing.'
`Yes - let him tell it his own way,' said Coggan.
Gabriel settled into a despairing attitude of patience, and Cainy went on:--`And there were great large houses, and more people all the week long than at Weatherbury club-walking' on White Tuesdays. And I went to grand churches and chapels. And how the parson would pray! Yes; he would kneel down and put up his hands together, and make the holy gold rings on his fingers gleam and twinkle in yer eyes, that he'd earned by praying so excellent well! - Ah yes, I wish I lived there.'
`Our poor Parson Thirdly can't get no money to buy such rings,' said Matthew Moon thoughtfully. `And as good a man as ever walked. I don't believe poor Thirdly have a single one, even of humblest tin or copper. Such a great ornament as they'd be to him on a dull a'ternoon, when he's up in the pulpit lighted by the wax candles! But 'tis impossible, poor man. Ah, to think how unequal things be.'
`Perhaps he's made of different stuff than to wear `em,' said Gabriel grimly. `Well, that's enough of this. Go on, Cainy - quick.'
`Oh - and the new style of pa'sons wear moustaches and long beards,' continued the illustrious traveller, `and look like Moses and Aaron complete, and make we fokes in the congregation feel all over like the children of Israel.'
`A very right feeling - very,' said Joseph Poorgrass.
`And there's two religions going on in the nation now - High Church and High Chapel. And, thinks I, I'll play fair; so I went to High Church in the morning, and High Chapel in the afternoon.
`A right and proper boy,' said Joseph Poorgrass.
`Well, at High Church they pray singing, and worship all the colours of the rainbow; and at High Chapel they pray preaching, and worship drab and whitewash only. And then - I didn't see no more of Miss Everdene at all.'
`Why didn't you say so afore, then?' exclaimed Oak, with much disappointment.
`Ah,' said Matthew Moon, `she'll wish her cake dough if so be she's ever intimate with that man.
`She's not over intimate with him,' said Gabriel indignantly.
`She would know better,' said Coggan. `Our mis'ess has too much sense under they knots of black hair to do such a mad thing.'
`You see, he's not a coarse, ignorant man, for he was well brought up,' said Matthew dubiously. `'Twas only wildness that made him a soldier, and maids rather like your man of sin.'
`Now, Cain Ball,' said Gabriel restlessly, can you swear in the most awful form that the woman you saw was Miss Everdene?'
`Cain Ball, you be no longer a babe and suckling,' said Joseph in the sepulchral tone the circumstances demanded, `and you know what taking an oath is. 'Tis a horrible testament mind ye, which you say and seal with your blood-stone, and the prophet Matthew tells us that on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder. Now, before all the work-folk here assembled, can you swear to your words as the shepherd asks ye?'
`Please no, Mister Oak!' said Cainy, looking from one to the other with great uneasiness at the spiritual magnitude of the position. `I don't mind saying 'tis true, but I don't like to say 'tis damn true, if that's what you mane.
`Cain, Cain, how can you?' asked Joseph sternly. `You be asked to swear in a holy manner' and you swear like wicked Shimei, the son of Gera, who cursed as he came. Young man, fie!'
`No, I don't! 'Tis you want to squander a pore boy's soul, Joseph Poorgrass - that's what 'tis!' said Cain, beginning to cry. `All I mane is that in common truth 'twas Miss Everdene and Sergeant Troy, but in the horrible so-help-me truth that ye want to make of it perhaps 'twas somebody else!'
`There's no getting at the rights of it,' said Gabriel, turning to his work.
`Cain Ball, you'll come to a bit of bread!' groaned Joseph Poorgrass.
Then the reapers' hooks were flourished again, and the old sounds went on. Gabriel, without making any pretence of being lively, did nothing to show that he was particularly dull. However, Coggan knew pretty nearly how the land lay, and when they were in a nook together he said--`Don't take on about her, Gabriel. What difference does it make whose sweetheart she is, since she can't be yours?'
`That's the very thing I say to myself,' said Gabriel.
