into various arched shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight of his dog George. The dog took no notice, for he had arrived at an age at which all superfluous barking was cynically avoided as a waste of breath—in fact he never barked even at the sheep except to order, when it was done with an absolutely neutral countenance, as a liturgical form of Commination-service, which, though offensive, had to be gone through once now and then just to frighten the flock for their own good.

A voice came from behind some laurel-bushes into which the cat had run:

“Poor dear! Did a nasty brute of a dog want to kill it!—did he poor dear!”

“I beg yer pardon,” said Oak to the voice, “but George was walking on behind me with a temper as mild as milk.”

Almost before he had ceased speaking, Oak was seized with a misgiving as to whose ear was the recipient of his answer. Nobody appeared, and he heard the person retreat among the bushes.

Gabriel meditated, and so deeply that he brought small furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed: his mental rehearsal and the reality had had no common grounds of opening.

Bathsheba’s aunt was indoors. “Will you tell Miss Everdene that somebody would be glad to speak to her?” said Mr. Oak. (Calling yourself merely Somebody, and not giving a name, is not by any means to be taken as an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world: it springs from a refined sense of modesty, of which townspeople, with their cards and announcements, have no notion whatever.)

Bathsheba was out. The voice had evidently been hers.

“Will you come in, Mr. Oak?”

“Oh, thank ye,” said Gabriel, following her to the fireplace. “I’ve brought a lamb for Miss Everdene. I thought she might like one to rear: girls do.”

“She might,” said Mrs. Hurst, musingly; “though she’s only a visitor here. If you will wait a minute, Bathsheba will be in.”

“Yes, I will wait,” said Gabriel, sitting down. “The lamb isn’t really the business I came about, Mrs. Hurst. In short, I was going to ask her if she’d like to be married.”

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