it across for his own use, on the plea of waste not, want not.  He also, from time to time, sipped sweet sly glances at her profile; noticing the set of her head, the curve of her throat, and other artistic properties of the lively goddess, who the while kept up a rather free, not to say too free, conversation with Mr. Shiner sitting opposite; which, after some uneasy criticism, and much shifting of argument backwards and forwards in Dick’s mind, he decided not to consider of alarming significance.

“A new music greets our ears now,” said Miss Fancy, alluding, with the sharpness that her position as village sharpener demanded, to the contrast between the rattle of knives and forks and the late notes of the fiddlers.

“Ay; and I don’t know but what ’tis sweeter in tone when you get above forty,” said the tranter; “except, in faith, as regards father there.  Never such a mortal man as he for tunes.  They do move his soul; don’t ’em, father?”

The eldest Dewy smiled across from his distant chair an assent to Reuben’s remark.

“Spaking of being moved in soul,” said Mr. Penny, “I shall never forget the first time I heard the ‘Dead March.’  ’Twas at poor Corp’l Nineman’s funeral at Casterbridge.  It fairly made my hair creep and fidget about like a vlock of sheep—­ah, it did, souls!  And when they had done, and the last trump had sounded, and the guns was fired over the dead hero’s grave, a’ icy-cold drop o’ moist sweat hung upon my forehead, and another upon my jawbone.  Ah, ’tis a very solemn thing!”

“Well, as to father in the corner there,” the tranter said, pointing to old William, who was in the act of filling his mouth; “he’d starve to death for music’s sake now, as much as when he was a boy-chap of fifteen.”

“Truly, now,” said Michael Mail, clearing the corner of his throat in the manner of a man who meant to be convincing; “there’s a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.”  He lifted the cup to his mouth, and drank himself gradually backwards from a perpendicular position to a slanting one, during which time his looks performed a circuit from the wall opposite him to the ceiling overhead.  Then clearing the other corner of his throat:  “Once I was a-setting in the little kitchen of the Dree Mariners at Casterbridge, having a bit of dinner, and a brass band struck up in the street.  Such a beautiful band as that were!  I was setting eating fried liver and lights, I well can mind—­ah, I was! and to save my life, I couldn’t help chawing to the tune.  Band played six-eight time; six-eight chaws I, willynilly.  Band plays common; common time went my teeth among the liver and lights as true as a hair.  Beautiful ’twere!  Ah, I shall never forget that there band!”

“That’s as tuneful a thing as ever I heard of,” said grandfather James, with the absent gaze which accompanies profound criticism.

“I don’t like Michael’s tuneful stories then,” said Mrs. Dewy.  “They are quite coarse to a person o’ decent taste.”