very pretty pigeon-pair--hey? If they
wouldn't I'll be dazed! Both of one mind about niceties for certain,
and learned in print, and always thinking about high doctrine--there
couldn't be a better couple if they were made o' purpose. Clym's
family is as good as hers. His father was a farmer, that's true; but
his mother was a sort of lady, as we know. Nothing would please me
better than to see them two man and wife."

"They'd look very natty, arm-in-crook together, and their best clothes
on, whether or no, if he's at all the well-favoured fellow he used to
be."

"They would, Humphrey. Well, I should like to see the chap terrible
much after so many years. If I knew for certain when he was coming
I'd stroll out three or four miles to meet him and help carry anything
for'n; though I suppose he's altered from the boy he was. They say he
can talk French as fast as a maid can eat blackberries; and if so,
depend upon it we who have stayed at home shall seem no more than
scroff in his eyes."

"Coming across the water to Budmouth by steamer, isn't he?"

"Yes; but how he's coming from Budmouth I don't know."

"That's a bad trouble about his cousin Thomasin. I wonder such a
nice-notioned fellow as Clym likes to come home into it. What a
nunnywatch we were in, to be sure, when we heard they weren't married
at all, after singing to 'em as man and wife that night! Be dazed if I
should like a relation of mine to have been made such a fool of by a
man. It makes the family look small."

"Yes. Poor maid, her heart has ached enough about it. Her health is
suffering from it, I hear, for she will bide entirely indoors. We
never see her out now, scampering over the furze with a face as red
as a rose, as she used to do."

"I've heard she wouldn't have Wildeve now if he asked her."

"You have? 'Tis news to me."

While the furze-gatherers had desultorily conversed thus Eustacia's
face gradually bent to the hearth in a profound reverie, her toe
unconsciously tapping the dry turf which lay burning at her feet.

The subject of their discourse had been keenly interesting to her. A
young and clever man was coming into that lonely heath from, of all
contrasting places in the world, Paris. It was like a man coming from
heaven. More singular still, the heathmen had instinctively coupled
her and this man together in their minds as a pair born for each
other.

That five minutes of overhearing furnished Eustacia with visions
enough to fill t