“Never mind!  ‘Ann,’ said you.”

“‘Ann,’ said I, as I was saying . . .  ‘Ann,’ I said to her when I was oiling my working-day boots wi’ my head hanging down, ‘Woot hae me?’ . . . What came next I can’t quite call up at this distance o’ time.  Perhaps your mother would know,—­she’s got a better memory for her little triumphs than I. However, the long and the short o’ the story is that we were married somehow, as I found afterwards.  ’Twas on White Tuesday,—­Mellstock Club walked the same day, every man two and two, and a fine day ’twas,—­hot as fire,—­how the sun did strike down upon my back going to church!  I well can mind what a bath o’ sweating I was in, body and soul!  But Fance will ha’ thee, Dick—­she won’t walk with another chap—­no such good luck.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Dick, whipping at Smart’s flank in a fanciful way, which, as Smart knew, meant nothing in connection with going on.  “There’s Pa’son Maybold, too—­that’s all against me.”

“What about he?  She’s never been stuffing into thy innocent heart that he’s in hove with her?  Lord, the vanity o’ maidens!”

“No, no.  But he called, and she looked at him in such a way, and at me in such a way—­quite different the ways were,—­and as I was coming off, there was he hanging up her birdcage.”

“Well, why shouldn’t the man hang up her bird-cage?  Turk seize it all, what’s that got to do wi’ it?  Dick, that thou beest a white-lyvered chap I don’t say, but if thou beestn’t as mad as a cappel-faced bull, let me smile no more.”

“O, ay.”

“And what’s think now, Dick?”

“I don’t know.”

“Here’s another pretty kettle o’ fish for thee.  Who d’ye think’s the bitter weed in our being turned out?  Did our party tell ’ee?”

“No.  Why, Pa’son Maybold, I suppose.”

“Shiner,—­because he’s in love with thy young woman, and d’want to see her young figure sitting up at that queer instrument, and her young fingers rum-strumming upon the keys.”

A sharp ado of sweet and bitter was going on in Dick during this communication from his father.  “Shiner’s a fool!—­no, that’s not it; I don’t believe any such thing, father.  Why, Shiner would never take a bold step like that, unless she’d been a little made up to, and had taken it kindly.  Pooh!”

“Who’s to say she didn’t?”

“I do.”

“The more fool you.”

“Why, father of me?”

“Has she ever done more to thee?”

“No.”

“Then she has done as much to he—­rot ’em!  Now, Dick, this is how a maid is.  She’ll swear she’s dying for thee, and she is dying for thee, and she will die for thee; but she’ll fling a look over t’other shoulder at another young feller, though never leaving off dying for thee just the same.”

“She’s not dying for me, and so she didn’t fling a look at him.”

“But she may be dying for him, for she looked at thee.”