The next. Friday night came. Dick resolved that if
no answer or sign were given by her the next day, on Sunday he would meet
her face to face, and have it all out by word of mouth.

"Dick," said his father, coming in from the garden at that moment--in
each hand a hive of bees tied in a cloth to prevent their egress--"I
think you'd better take these two swarms of bees to Mrs. Maybold's to-
morrow, instead o' me, and I'll go wi' Smiler and the wagon."

It was a relief; for Mrs. Maybold, the vicar's mother, who had just taken
into her head a fancy for keeping bees (pleasantly disguised under the
pretence of its being an economical wish to produce her own honey), lived
near the watering-place of Budmouth-Regis, ten miles off, and the
business of transporting the hives thither would occupy the whole day,
and to some extent annihilate the vacant time between this evening and
the coming Sunday. The best spring-cart was washed throughout, the axles
oiled, and the bees placed therein for the journey.

PART THE THIRD--SUMMER

CHAPTER I: DRIVING OUT OF BUDMOUTH

An easy bend of neck and graceful set of head; full and wavy bundles of
dark-brown hair; light fall of little feet; pretty devices on the skirt
of the dress; clear deep eyes; in short, a bunch of sweets: it was Fancy!
Dick's heart went round to her with a rush.

The scene was the corner of Mary Street in Budmouth-Regis, near the
King's statue, at which point the white angle of the last house in the
row cut perpendicularly an embayed and nearly motionless expanse of salt
water projected from the outer ocean--to-day lit in bright tones of green
and opal. Dick and Smart had just emerged from the street, and there on
the right, against the brilliant sheet of liquid colour, stood Fancy Day;
and she turned and recognized him.

Dick suspended his thoughts of the letter and wonder at how she came
there by driving close to the chains of the Esplanade--incontinently
displacing two chairmen, who had just come to life for the summer in new
clean shirts and revivified clothes, and being almost displaced in turn
by a rigid boy rattling along with a baker's cart, and looking neither to
the right nor the left. He asked if she were going to Mellstock that
night.

"Yes, I'm waiting for the carrier," she replied, seeming, too, to suspend
thoughts of the letter.

"Now I can drive you home nicely, and you save half an hour. Will ye
come with me?"

As Fancy's power