“Farmer Oak—and nobody else?—you two alone?”
“Yes.”
“But is it safe, ma’am, after what’s been said?” asked her companion, dubiously. “A woman’s good name is such a perishable article that—”
Bathsheba laughed with a flushed cheek, and whispered in Liddy’s ear, although there was nobody present. Then Liddy stared and exclaimed, “Souls alive, what news! It makes my heart go quite bumpity-bump!”
“It makes mine rather furious, too,” said Bathsheba. “However, there’s no getting out of it now!”
It was a damp disagreeable morning. Nevertheless, at twenty minutes to ten o’clock, Oak came out of his house, and
Went up the hill side
With that sort of stride
A man puts out when walking in search of a bride,
and knocked at Bathsheba’s door. Ten minutes later a large and a smaller umbrella might have been seen moving from the same door, and through the mist along the road to the church. The distance was not more than a quarter of a mile, and these two sensible persons deemed it unnecessary to drive. An observer must have been very close indeed to discover that the forms under the umbrellas were those of Oak and Bathsheba, arm-in-arm for the first time in their lives, Oak in a greatcoat extending to his knees, and Bathsheba in a cloak that reached her clogs. Yet, though so plainly dressed, there was a certain rejuvenated appearance about her:—
As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.
Repose had again incarnadined her cheeks; and having, at Gabriel’s request, arranged her hair this morning as she had worn it years ago on Norcombe Hill, she seemed in his eyes remarkably like a girl of that fascinating dream, which, considering that she was now only three or four-and-twenty, was perhaps not very wonderful. In the church were Tall, Liddy, and the parson, and in a remarkably short space of time the deed was done.