the love of it, too--foot and waist and eyes all a-dancing, and body
and blood all a-tingle as soon as ever the fiddle spoke. Maybe this
same speech of Old John's set me thinking. Or, maybe I'd been
thinking already--what with their May-game hints and the loneliness
out there. Anyway, I dangled pretty close on Bathsheba's heels all
that Christmas. She was comely--you understand--very comely and
tall, with dark blood, and eyes that put you in mind of a light
shining steady upon dark water. And good as gold. She's dead and
gone these twelve years--rest her soul! But (praise God for her!)
I've never married another woman nor wanted to.

There, I've as good as told you already! When the time came and I
asked her if she liked me, she said she liked no man half so well:
and that being as it should be, the next thing was to put up the
banns. There wasn't time that holiday: like a fool, I had been
dilly-dallying too long, though I believe now I might have asked her
a month before. So the wedding was held in the April following, my
father going out to the Gunnel for a couple of days, so that Old John
might be ashore to give his daughter away. The most I mind of the
wedding was the wonder of beholding the old chap there in a
long-tailed coat, having never seen him for years but in his
oilskins.

Well, the rest of that year seemed pretty much like all the others,
except that coming home was better than ever. But when Christmas
went by, and February came and our turn to be out again on the
Gunnel, I went with a dismal feeling I hadn't known before.
For Bathsheba was drawing near her time, and the sorrow was that she
must go through it without me. She had walked down to the quay with
us, to see us off; and all the way she chatted and laughed with my