ow I do wish it was possible for you to be one!"

"So I am. And I'll tell you how to bewitch your father to let you marry
Dick Dewy."

"Will it hurt him, poor thing?"

"Hurt who?"

"Father."

"No; the charm is worked by common sense, and the spell can only be broke
by your acting stupidly."

Fancy looked rather perplexed, and Elizabeth went on:

"This fear of Lizz--whatever 'tis--
By great and small;
She makes pretence to common sense,
And that's all.

"You must do it like this." The witch laid down her knife and potato,
and then poured into Fancy's ear a long and detailed list of directions,
glancing up from the corner of her eye into Fancy's face with an
expression of sinister humour. Fancy's face brightened, clouded, rose
and sank, as the narrative proceeded. "There," said Elizabeth at length,
stooping for the knife and another potato, "do that, and you'll have him
by-long and by-late, my dear."

"And do it I will!" said Fancy.

She then turned her attention to the external world once more. The rain
continued as usual, but the wind had abated considerably during the
discourse. Judging that it was now possible to keep an umbrella erect,
she pulled her hood again over her bonnet, bade the witch good-bye, and
went her way.

CHAPTER IV: THE SPELL

Mrs. Endorfield's advice was duly followed.

"I be proper sorry that your daughter isn't so well as she might be,"
said a Mellstock man to Geoffrey one morning.

"But is there anything in it?" said Geoffrey uneasily, as he shifted his
hat to the right. "I can't understand the report. She didn't complain
to me a bit when I saw her."

"No appetite at all, they say."

Geoffrey crossed to Mellstock and called at the school that afternoon.
Fancy welcomed him as usual, and asked him to stay and take tea with her.

"I be'n't much for tea, this time o' day," he said, but stayed.

During the meal he watched her narrowly. And to his great consternation
discovered the following unprecedented change in the healthy girl--that
she cut herself only a diaphanous slice of bread-and-butter, and, laying
it on her plate, passed the meal-time in breaking it into pieces, but
eating no more than about one-tenth of the slice. Geoffrey hoped she
would say something about Dick, and finish up by weeping, as she had done
after the decision against him a few days subsequent to the interview in
the garden. But nothing was said, and in due time Geoffrey d