him.

"I can guess," he replied.

She scrutinized his face. "Yes, you guess right. It is going to be after
all. He thinks I may as well make up my mind, and I have got to think
so too. It is to be on the twenty-fifth of next month, if you don't
object."

"Do what you think right, dear. I am only too glad that you see your way
clear to happiness again. My sex owes you every amends for the treatment
you received in days gone by."*

* The writer may state here that the original conception of
the story did not design a marriage between Thomasin and
Venn. He was to have retained his isolated and weird
character to the last, and to have disappeared mysteriously
from the heath, nobody knowing whither--Thomasin remaining a
widow. But certain circumstances of serial publication led
to a change of intent.

Readers can therefore choose between the endings, and those with an
austere artistic code can assume the more consistent conclusion to be
the true one.

4--Cheerfulness Again Asserts Itself at Blooms-End, and Clym Finds His
Vocation

Anybody who had passed through Blooms-End about eleven o'clock on the
morning fixed for the wedding would have found that, while Yeobright's
house was comparatively quiet, sounds denoting great activity came from
the dwelling of his nearest neighbour, Timothy Fairway. It was chiefly
a noise of feet, briskly crunching hither and thither over the sanded
floor within. One man only was visible outside, and he seemed to be
later at an appointment than he had intended to be, for he hastened up
to the door, lifted the latch, and walked in without ceremony.

The scene within was not quite the customary one. Standing about the
room was the little knot of men who formed the chief part of the Egdon
coterie, there being present Fairway himself, Grandfer Cantle, Humphrey,
Christian, and one or two turf-cutters. It was a warm day, and the men
were as a matter of course in their shirtsleeves, except Christian, who
had always a nervous fear of parting with a scrap of his clothing when
in anybody's house but his own. Across the stout oak table in the middle
of the room was thrown a mass of striped linen, which Grandfer Cantle
held down on one side, and Humphrey on the other, while Fairway rubbed
its surface with a yellow lump, his face being damp and creased with the
effort of the labour.

"Waxing a bed-tick, souls?" said the newcomer.

"Yes, Sam," said Grand