“Oh!” said Coggan, surprised; “what’s going on to-night then, make so bold Mr. Oak?”
It seemed rather ungenerous not to tell Coggan, under the circumstances, for Coggan had been true as steel all through the time of Gabriel’s unhappiness about Bathsheba, and Gabriel said, “You can keep a secret, Coggan?”
“You’ve proved me, and you know.”
“Yes, I have, and I do know. Well, then, mistress and I mean to get married to-morrow morning.”
“Heaven’s high tower! And yet I’ve thought of such a thing from time to time; true, I have. But keeping it so close! Well, there, ’tis no consarn of of mine, and I wish ’ee joy o’ her.”
“Thank you, Coggan. But I assure ’ee that this great hush is not what I wished for at all, or what either of us would have wished if it hadn’t been for certain things that would make a gay wedding seem hardly the thing. Bathsheba has a great wish that all the parish shall not be in church, looking at her—she’s shy-like and nervous about it, in fact—so I be doing this to humour her.”
“Ay, I see: quite right, too, I suppose I must say. And you be now going down to the clerk.”
“Yes; you may as well come with me.”
“I am afeard your labour in keeping it close will be throwed away,” said Coggan, as they walked along. “Labe Tall’s old woman will horn it all over parish in half-an-hour.”
“So she will, upon my life; I never thought of that,” said Oak, pausing. “Yet I must tell him to-night, I suppose, for he’s working so far off, and leaves early.”