“Come in, come in,” said Mrs. Yeobright; and Clym went forward to welcome them.  “How is it you are so late?  Grandfer Cantle has been here ever so long, and we thought you’d have come with him, as you live so near one another.”

“Well, I should have come earlier,” Mr. Fairway said, and paused to look along the beam of the ceiling for a nail to hang his hat on; but, finding his accustomed one to be occupied by the mistletoe, and all the nails in the walls to be burdened with bunches of holly, he at last relieved himself of the hat by ticklishly balancing it between the candlebox and the head of the clock-case.  “I should have come earlier, ma’am,” he resumed, with a more composed air, “but I know what parties be, and how there’s none too much room in folks’ houses at such times, so I thought I wouldn’t come till you’d got settled a bit.”

“And I thought so too, Mrs. Yeobright,” said Christian earnestly, “but father there was so eager that he had no manners at all, and left home almost afore ’twas dark.  I told him ‘twas barely decent in a’ old man to come so oversoon; but words be wind.”

“Klk!  I wasn’t going to bide waiting about, till half the game was over!  I’m as light as a kite when anything’s going on!” crowed Grandfer Cantle from the chimney-seat.

Fairway had meanwhile concluded a critical gaze at Yeobright.  “Now, you may not believe it,” he said to the rest of the room, “but I should never have knowed this gentleman if I had met him anywhere off his own he’th—­he’s altered so much.”

“You too have altered, and for the better, I think Timothy,” said Yeobright, surveying the firm figure of Fairway.

“Master Yeobright, look me over too.  I have altered for the better, haven’t I, hey?” said Grandfer Cantle, rising and placing himself something above half a foot from Clym’s eye, to induce the most searching criticism.

“To be sure we will,” said Fairway, taking the candle and moving it over the surface of the Grandfer’s countenance, the subject of his scrutiny irradiating himself with light and pleasant smiles, and giving himself jerks of juvenility.

“You haven’t changed much,” said Yeobright.

“If there’s any difference, Grandfer is younger,” appended Fairway decisively.

“And yet not my own doing, and I feel no pride in it,” said the pleased ancient.  “But I can’t be cured of my vagaries; them I plead guilty to.  Yes, Master Cantle always was that, as we know.  But I am nothing by the side of you, Mister Clym.”

“Nor any o’ us,” said Humphrey, in a low rich tone of admiration, not intended to reach anybody’s ears.