of some
metal or other that would take a polish, dangling from his fob as his
only personal ornament. Shaking the water-drops from his low-crowned
glazed hat, he said, "I must ask for a few minutes' shelter, comrades,
or I shall be wetted to my skin before I get to Casterbridge."

"Make yourself at home, master," said the shepherd, perhaps a trifle
less heartily than on the first occasion. Not that Fennel had the
least tinge of niggardliness in his composition; but the room was far
from large, spare chairs were not numerous, and damp companions were
not altogether desirable at close quarters for the women and girls in
their bright-colored gowns.

However, the second comer, after taking off his greatcoat, and hanging
his hat on a nail in one of the ceiling-beams as if he had been
specially invited to put it there, advanced and sat down at the table.
This had been pushed so closely into the chimney-corner, to give all
available room to the dancers, that its inner edge grazed the elbow
of the man who had ensconced himself by the fire; and thus the two
strangers were brought into close companionship. They nodded to each
other by way of breaking the ice of unacquaintance, and the first
stranger handed his neighbor the family mug--a huge vessel of brown
ware, having its upper edge worn away like a threshold by the rub of
whole generations of thirsty lips that had gone the way of all flesh,
and bearing the following inscription burnt upon its rotund side in
yellow letters:

THERE IS NO FUN
UNTILL I CUM.

The other man, nothing loth, raised the mug to his lips, and drank on,
and on, and on--till a curious blueness overspread the countenance
of the shepherd's wife, who had regarded with no little surprise the
first stranger's free offer to the second of what did not belong to
him to dispense.

"I knew it!" said the toper to the shepherd with much satisfaction.
"When I walked up your garden before coming in, and saw the hives all
of a row, I said to myself, 'Where there's bees there's honey,
and where there's honey there's mead,' But mead of such a truly
comfortable sort as this I really didn't expect to meet in my older
days." He took yet another pull at the mug, till it assumed an ominous
elevation.

"Glad you enjoy it!" said the shepherd warmly.

"It is goodish mead," assented Mrs. Fennel, with an absence of
enthusiasm which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise for
one's cellar at too heavy a price.