at
did he do?" Bathsheba said perforce.

"Didn't turn his head to look at you once all the service."

"Why should he?" again demanded her mistress, wearing a nettled look.
"I didn't ask him to."

"Oh no. But everybody else was noticing you; and it was odd he
didn't. There, 'tis like him. Rich and gentlemanly, what does he
care?"

Bathsheba dropped into a silence intended to express that she had
opinions on the matter too abstruse for Liddy's comprehension, rather
than that she had nothing to say.

"Dear me--I had nearly forgotten the valentine I bought yesterday,"
she exclaimed at length.

"Valentine! who for, miss?" said Liddy. "Farmer Boldwood?"

It was the single name among all possible wrong ones that just at
this moment seemed to Bathsheba more pertinent than the right.

"Well, no. It is only for little Teddy Coggan. I have promised him
something, and this will be a pretty surprise for him. Liddy, you
may as well bring me my desk and I'll direct it at once."

Bathsheba took from her desk a gorgeously illuminated and embossed
design in post-octavo, which had been bought on the previous
market-day at the chief stationer's in Casterbridge. In the centre
was a small oval enclosure; this was left blank, that the sender
might insert tender words more appropriate to the special occasion
than any generalities by a printer could possibly be.

"Here's a place for writing," said Bathsheba. "What shall I put?"

"Something of this sort, I should think," returned Liddy promptly:--

"The rose is red,
The violet blue,
Carnation's sweet,
And so are you."

"Yes, that shall be it. It just suits itself to a chubby-faced child
like him," said Bathsheba. She inserted the words in a small though
legible handwriting; enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and dipped
her pen for the direction.

"What fun it would be to send it to the stupid old Boldwood, and how
he would wonder!" said the irrepressible Liddy, lifting her eyebrows,
and indulging in an awful mirth on the verge of fear as she thought
of the moral and social magnitude of the man contemplated.

Bathsheba paused to regard the idea at full length. Boldwood's had
begun to be a troublesome image--a species of Daniel in her kingdom
who persisted in kneeling eastward when reason and common sense said
that he might just as well follow suit with the rest, and afford her
the official glance of admiration which cost nothing at all. She was
f