ngs."

"But you might not like to see a lot of folk going crazy round a
stick, under your very nose?"

"I shall have no objection at all."

Venn soon after went away, and in the evening Yeobright strolled as
far as Fairway's cottage. It was a lovely May sunset, and the birch
trees which grew on this margin of the vast Egdon wilderness had put
on their new leaves, delicate as butterflies' wings, and diaphanous as
amber. Beside Fairway's dwelling was an open space recessed from the
road, and here were now collected all the young people from within a
radius of a couple of miles. The pole lay with one end supported on a
trestle, and women were engaged in wreathing it from the top downwards
with wildflowers. The instincts of merry England lingered on here
with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition
has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon.
Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan
still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic
gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are
forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval
doctrine.

Yeobright did not interrupt the preparations, and went home again.
The next morning, when Thomasin withdrew the curtains of her bedroom
window, there stood the Maypole in the middle of the green, its top
cutting into the sky. It had sprung up in the night, or rather early
morning, like Jack's bean-stalk. She opened the casement to get a
better view of the garlands and posies that adorned it. The sweet
perfume of the flowers had already spread into the surrounding air,
which, being free from every taint, conducted to her lips a full
measure of the fragrance received from the spire of blossom in its
midst. At the top of the pole were crossed hoops decked with small
flowers; beneath these came a milk-white zone of Maybloom; then a zone
of bluebells, then of cowslips, then of lilacs, then of ragged-robins,
daffodils, and so on, till the lowest stage was reached. Thomasin
noticed all these, and was delighted that the May revel was to be so
near.

When afternoon came people began to gather on the green, and Yeobright
was interested enough to look out upon them from the open window
of his room. Soon after this Thomasin walked out from the door
immediately below and turned her eyes up to her cousin's face. She
was dressed more gaily than Yeobright had ever seen her dressed sin