Thomas Hardy

“ Liddy looked from a back window into the courtyard behind, which was now getting low-toned and dim with the earliest films of night. A crooked file of men was approaching the back door. The whole string of trailing individuals advanced in the completest balance of intention, like the remarkable creatures known as Chain Salpae, which, distinctly organized in other respects, have one will common to a whole family. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ Though elastic in nature she was less daring than Bathsheba, and occasionally showed some earnestness, which consisted half of genuine feeling, and half of mannerliness superadded by way of duty.
Through a partly-opened door the noise of a scrubbing-brush led up to the charwoman, Maryann Money, a person who for a face had a circular disc, furrowed less by age than by long gazes of perplexity at distant objects. To think of her was to get good-humoured ”