from the background,
with the tone of a man who preferred the original subject. "Faith, it
wasn't worth your while on our account, for as Maister Billy Wills says,
we be bruckle folk here--the best o' us hardly honest sometimes, what
with hard winters, and so many mouths to fill, and Goda'mighty sending
his little taties so terrible small to fill 'em with. We don't
think about flowers and fair faces, not we--except in the shape o'
cauliflowers and pigs' chaps."

"But, no!" said Donald Farfrae, gazing round into their faces with
earnest concern; "the best of ye hardly honest--not that surely? None of
ye has been stealing what didn't belong to him?"

"Lord! no, no!" said Solomon Longways, smiling grimly. "That's only his
random way o' speaking. 'A was always such a man of underthoughts." (And
reprovingly towards Christopher): "Don't ye be so over-familiar with a
gentleman that ye know nothing of--and that's travelled a'most from the
North Pole."

Christopher Coney was silenced, and as he could get no public sympathy,
he mumbled his feelings to himself: "Be dazed, if I loved my country
half as well as the young feller do, I'd live by claning my neighbour's
pigsties afore I'd go away! For my part I've no more love for my country
than I have for Botany Bay!"

"Come," said Longways; "let the young man draw onward with his ballet,
or we shall be here all night."

"That's all of it," said the singer apologetically.

"Soul of my body, then we'll have another!" said the general dealer.

"Can you turn a strain to the ladies, sir?" inquired a fat woman with
a figured purple apron, the waiststring of which was overhung so far by
her sides as to be invisible.

"Let him breathe--let him breathe, Mother Cuxsom. He hain't got his
second wind yet," said the master glazier.

"Oh yes, but I have!" exclaimed the young man; and he at once rendered
"O Nannie" with faultless modulations, and another or two of the like
sentiment, winding up at their earnest request with "Auld Lang Syne."

By this time he had completely taken possession of the hearts of the
Three Mariners' inmates, including even old Coney. Notwithstanding an
occasional odd gravity which awoke their sense of the ludicrous for the
moment, they began to view him through a golden haze which the tone
of his mind seemed to raise around him. Casterbridge had
sentiment--Casterbridge had romance; but this stranger's sentiment was
of differing quality. Or rather, perhaps, the