She looked aside to consider the precise compass of that question. “That I can’t exactly answer,” she replied with soft archness.
As they were going rather slowly, another spring-cart, containing a farmer, farmer’s wife, and farmer’s man, jogged past them; and the farmer’s wife and farmer’s man eyed the couple very curiously. The farmer never looked up from the horse’s tail.
“Why can’t you exactly answer?” said Dick, quickening Smart a little, and jogging on just behind the farmer and farmer’s wife and man.
As no answer came, and as their eyes had nothing else to do, they both contemplated the picture presented in front, and noticed how the farmer’s wife sat flattened between the two men, who bulged over each end of the seat to give her room, till they almost sat upon their respective wheels; and they looked too at the farmer’s wife’s silk mantle, inflating itself between her shoulders like a balloon and sinking flat again, at each jog of the horse. The farmer’s wife, feeling their eyes sticking into her back, looked over her shoulder. Dick dropped ten yards further behind.
“Fancy, why can’t you answer?” he repeated.
“Because how much you are to me depends upon how much I am to you,” said she in low tones.
“Everything,” said Dick, putting his hand towards hers, and casting emphatic eyes upon the upper curve of her cheek.
“Now, Richard Dewy, no touching me! I didn’t say in what way your thinking of me affected the question—perhaps inversely, don’t you see? No touching, sir! Look; goodness me, don’t, Dick!”
The cause of her sudden start was the unpleasant appearance over Dick’s right shoulder of an empty timber-wagon and four journeymen-carpenters reclining in lazy postures inside it, their eyes directed upwards at various oblique angles into the surrounding world, the chief object of their existence being apparently to criticize to the very backbone and marrow every animate object that came within the compass of their vision. This difficulty of Dick’s was overcome by trotting on till the wagon and carpenters were beginning to look rather misty by reason of a film of dust that accompanied their wagon-wheels, and rose around their heads like a fog.
“Say you love me, Fancy.”