"Never was such a hopeless man for a woman! He's been courted by
sixes and sevens--all the girls, gentle and simple, for miles round,
have tried him. Jane Perkins worked at him for two months like a
slave, and the two Miss Taylors spent a year upon him, and he cost
Farmer Ives's daughter nights of tears and twenty pounds' worth of
new clothes; but Lord--the money might as well have been thrown out
of the window."

A little boy came up at this moment and looked in upon them. This
child was one of the Coggans, who, with the Smallburys, were as
common among the families of this district as the Avons and Derwents
among our rivers. He always had a loosened tooth or a cut finger to
show to particular friends, which he did with an air of being thereby
elevated above the common herd of afflictionless humanity--to which
exhibition people were expected to say "Poor child!" with a dash of
congratulation as well as pity.

"I've got a pen-nee!" said Master Coggan in a scanning measure.

"Well--who gave it you, Teddy?" said Liddy.

"Mis-terr Bold-wood! He gave it to me for opening the gate."

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'Where are you going, my little man?' and I said, 'To Miss
Everdene's please,' and he said, 'She is a staid woman, isn't she, my
little man?' and I said, 'Yes.'"

"You naughty child! What did you say that for?"

"'Cause he gave me the penny!"

"What a pucker everything is in!" said Bathsheba, discontentedly
when the child had gone. "Get away, Maryann, or go on with your
scrubbing, or do something! You ought to be married by this time,
and not here troubling me!"

"Ay, mistress--so I did. But what between the poor men I won't have,
and the rich men who won't have me, I stand as a pelican in the
wilderness!"

"Did anybody ever want to marry you miss?" Liddy ventured to ask when
they were again alone. "Lots of 'em, I daresay?"

Bathsheba paused, as if about to refuse a reply, but the temptation
to say yes, since it was really in her power was irresistible by
aspiring virginity, in spite of her spleen at having been published
as old.

"A man wanted to once," she said, in a highly experienced tone, and
the image of Gabriel Oak, as the farmer, rose before her.

"How nice it must seem!" said Liddy, with the fixed features of
mental realization. "And you wouldn't have him?"

"He wasn't quite good enough for me."

"How sweet to be able to disdain, when most of us are glad to say,
'Thank y