two Elds, and the young gentleman were standing by this time opposite
the church porch, but as far away from it as the width of the pathway
would allow. Various knots of villagers, observing that his lordship's
guest had stayed to talk, stood respectfully apart to look on, and,
if it might be, to listen. Now Reuben, for reasons already hinted at,
disliked Mr. De Blacquaire. He was not, perhaps, quite so conscious
as Mr. De Blacquaire himself that all the advantage of the differences
between them rested on the young gentleman's side. Reuben was not the
sort of youngster who says to himself, "I am a handsome fellow," or "I
am a clever fellow," or "I am a fellow of a good heart," but in face of
Ferdinand's obvious admiration of Ruth and his evident desire to stand
well in her graces he had sprung up at once to self-measurement, and
had set himself shoulder to shoulder with the intruder for purposes of
comparison. With all the good the love for a good woman does us, with
all the wheat and oil and wine it brings for the nourishment of the
loftier half of us, it must needs bring a foolish bitter weed or two,
which being eaten disturb the stomach and summon singular apparitions.
And when Reuben saw the girl of his heart in vivacious public talk with
a young man of another social sphere he was quite naturally a great deal
more perturbed than he need have been. The gentleman admired her, and
it was not outside the nature of things that she might admire the
gentleman. He came up, therefore, mighty serious, and shook hands with
Fuller and the brethren, and then with Ruth, with an air of severity
which was by no means usual with him. He carried his violin case tucked
beneath his arm--a fact which of itself gave him an unworthy aspect in
Ferdinand's eyes--and he had shaken hands with Ruth without raising his
hat. A denizen of Heydon Hay who had taken off his hat in the open air
to a woman would have been scoffed by his neighbors, and would probably
have startled the woman herself as much as his own sense of propriety.
But all the same Reuben's salute seemed mutilated and boorish to the man
of more finished breeding, and helped to mark him as unworthy to be the
suitor of so charming a creature as the rustic beauty.

"Mr. De Blacquaire's a-tellin' us, Reuben," said old Fuller, "as theer's
been some talk o' breaking up the church band and starting a horgin i'
the place on it."

"That will end in talk," said Reuben, with a half-defian