Notwithstanding the interruption in their walk, the excellent habit which Mrs. Poyser’s clock had of taking time by the forelock had secured their arrival at the village while it was still a quarter to two, though almost every one who meant to go to church was already within the churchyard gates.  Those who stayed at home were chiefly mothers, like Timothy’s Bess, who stood at her own door nursing her baby and feeling as women feel in that position—­that nothing else can be expected of them.

It was not entirely to see Thias Bede’s funeral that the people were standing about the churchyard so long before service began; that was their common practice.  The women, indeed, usually entered the church at once, and the farmers’ wives talked in an undertone to each other, over the tall pews, about their illnesses and the total failure of doctor’s stuff, recommending dandelion-tea, and other home-made specifics, as far preferable—­about the servants, and their growing exorbitance as to wages, whereas the quality of their services declined from year to year, and there was no girl nowadays to be trusted any further than you could see her—­about the bad price Mr. Dingall, the Treddleston grocer, was giving for butter, and the reasonable doubts that might be held as to his solvency, notwithstanding that Mrs. Dingall was a sensible woman, and they were all sorry for her, for she had very good kin.  Meantime the men lingered outside, and hardly any of them except the singers, who had a humming and fragmentary rehearsal to go through, entered the church until Mr. Irwine was in the desk.  They saw no reason for that premature entrance—­what could they do in church if they were there before service began?—­and they did not conceive that any power in the universe could take it ill of them if they stayed out and talked a little about “bus’ness.”

Chad Cranage looks like quite a new acquaintance to-day, for he has got his clean Sunday face, which always makes his little granddaughter cry at him as a stranger.  But an experienced eye would have fixed on him at once as the village blacksmith, after seeing the humble deference with which the big saucy fellow took off his hat and stroked his hair to the farmers; for Chad was accustomed to say that a working-man must hold a candle to a personage understood to be as black as he was himself on weekdays; by which evil-sounding rule of conduct he meant what was, after all, rather virtuous than otherwise, namely, that men who had horses to be shod must be treated with respect.  Chad and the rougher sort of workmen kept aloof from the grave under the white thorn, where the burial was going forward; but Sandy Jim, and several of the farm-labourers, made a group round it, and stood with their hats off, as fellow-mourners with the mother and sons.  Others held a midway position, sometimes watching the group at the grave, sometimes listening to the conversation of the farmers, who stood in a knot near the church door, and were now joined by