hen, taking down the ham
and cutting the slices that were to be broiled, and as she trussed the
fowl that was to be boiled for John Crumb, she made mental comparisons
between him and Sir Felix Carbury. She could see, as though present
to her at the moment, the mealy, floury head of the one, with hair
stiff with perennial dust from his sacks, and the sweet glossy dark
well-combed locks of the other, so bright, so seductive, that she was
ever longing to twine her fingers among them. And she remembered the
heavy, flat, broad honest face of the mealman, with his mouth slow in
motion, and his broad nose looking like a huge white promontory, and
his great staring eyes, from the corners of which he was always
extracting meal and grit;--and then also she remembered the white teeth,
the beautiful soft lips, the perfect eyebrows, and the rich complexion
of her London lover. Surely a lease of Paradise with the one, though
but for one short year, would be well purchased at the price of a life
with the other! 'It's no good going against love,' she said to herself,
'and I won't try. He shall have his supper, and be told all about it,
and then go home. He cares more for his supper than he do for me.' And
then, with this final resolution firmly made, she popped the fowl into
the pot. Her grandfather wanted her to leave Sheep's Acre. Very well.
She had a little money of her own, and would take herself off to
London. She knew what people would say, but she cared nothing for old
women's tales. She would know how to take care of herself, and could
always say in her own defence that her grandfather had turned her out
of Sheep's Acre.

Seven had been the hour named, and punctually at that hour John Crumb
knocked at the back door of Sheep's Acre farm-house. Nor did he come
alone. He was accompanied by his friend Joe Mixet, the baker of
Bungay, who, as all Bungay knew, was to be his best man at his
marriage. John Crumb's character was not without any fine attributes.
He could earn money,--and having earned it could spend and keep it in
fair proportion. He was afraid of no work, and,--to give him his due,--
was afraid of no man. He was honest, and ashamed of nothing that he
did. And after his fashion he had chivalrous ideas about women. He was
willing to thrash any man that ill-used a woman, and would certainly
be a most dangerous antagonist to any man who would misuse a woman
belonging to him. But Ruby had told the truth of him in saying that