not intending to linger more than a moment,
but the spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing without male partners
seemed to amuse the third, and make him in no hurry to move on. He
unstrapped his knapsack, put it, with his stick, on the hedge-bank,
and opened the gate.

"What are you going to do, Angel?" asked the eldest.

"I am inclined to go and have a fling with them. Why not all of
us--just for a minute or two--it will not detain us long?"

"No--no; nonsense!" said the first. "Dancing in public with a troop
of country hoydens--suppose we should be seen! Come along, or it
will be dark before we get to Stourcastle, and there's no place we
can sleep at nearer than that; besides, we must get through another
chapter of _A Counterblast to Agnosticism_ before we turn in, now I
have taken the trouble to bring the book."

"All right--I'll overtake you and Cuthbert in five minutes; don't
stop; I give my word that I will, Felix."

The two elder reluctantly left him and walked on, taking their
brother's knapsack to relieve him in following, and the youngest
entered the field.

"This is a thousand pities," he said gallantly, to two or three of
the girls nearest him, as soon as there was a pause in the dance.
"Where are your partners, my dears?"

"They've not left off work yet," answered one of the boldest.
"They'll be here by and by. Till then, will you be one, sir?"

"Certainly. But what's one among so many!"

"Better than none. 'Tis melancholy work facing and footing it to one
of your own sort, and no clipsing and colling at all. Now, pick and
choose."

"'Ssh--don't be so for'ard!" said a shyer girl.

The young man, thus invited, glanced them over, and attempted some
discrimination; but, as the group were all so new to him, he could
not very well exercise it. He took almost the first that came to
hand, which was not the speaker, as she had expected; nor did it
happen to be Tess Durbeyfield. Pedigree, ancestral skeletons,
monumental record, the d'Urberville lineaments, did not help Tess in
her life's battle as yet, even to the extent of attracting to her a
dancing-partner over the heads of the commonest peasantry. So much
for Norman blood unaided by Victorian lucre.

The name of the eclipsing girl, whatever it was, has not been handed
down; but she was envied by all as the first who enjoyed the luxury
of a masculine partner that evening. Yet such was the force of
example that the village young men, who