I hardly
blame Thomasin Yeobright and neighbour Wildeve for doing it quiet, if
I must own it. A wedding at home means five and six-handed reels by
the hour; and they do a man's legs no good when he's over forty."

"True. Once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one
in a jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make yourself
worth your victuals."

"You be bound to dance at Christmas because 'tis the time o' year; you
must dance at weddings because 'tis the time o' life. At christenings
folk will even smuggle in a reel or two, if 'tis no further on than
the first or second chiel. And this is not naming the songs you've
got to sing... For my part I like a good hearty funeral as well as
anything. You've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties,
and even better. And it don't wear your legs to stumps in talking
over a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes."

"Nine folks out of ten would own 'twas going too far to dance then, I
suppose?" suggested Grandfer Cantle.

"'Tis the only sort of party a staid man can feel safe at after the
mug have been round a few times."

"Well, I can't understand a quiet lady-like little body like Tamsin
Yeobright caring to be married in such a mean way," said Susan
Nunsuch, the wide woman, who preferred the original subject. "'Tis
worse than the poorest do. And I shouldn't have cared about the man,
though some may say he's good-looking."

"To give him his due he's a clever, learned fellow in his way--a'most
as clever as Clym Yeobright used to be. He was brought up to better
things than keeping the Quiet Woman. An engineer--that's what the man
was, as we know; but he threw away his chance, and so 'a took a public
house to live. His learning was no use to him at all."

"Very often the case," said Olly, the besom-maker. "And yet how people
do strive after it and get it! The class of folk that couldn't use
to make a round O to save their bones from the pit can write their
names now without a sputter of the pen, oftentimes without a single
blot: what do I say?--why, almost without a desk to lean their
stomachs and elbows upon."

"True: 'tis amazing what a polish the world have been brought to,"
said Humphrey.

"Why, afore I went a soldier in the Bang-up Locals (as we was called),
in the year four," chimed in Grandfer Cantle brightly, "I didn't know
no more what the world was like than the commonest man among ye. And
now, jown it all, I won'