Thomas Hardy

“ Are they satisfactory women?" she inquired softly of Henery Fray.
"Oh mem -- don't ask me! Yielding women -- as scarlet a pair as ever was!" groaned Henery under his breath.
"Sit down."
"Who, mem?"
"Sit down."
Joseph Poorgrass, in the background, twitched, and his lips became dry with fear of some terrible consequences, as he saw Bathsheba summarily speaking, and Henery slinking off to a corner.
"Now the next. Laban Tall, you'll stay on working for me?"
"For you or anybody that pays me well, ma'am," replied the young married man.
"True -- the man must live!" ”

“ Certainly nobody without previous information would have dreamt that Oak and the handsome woman before whom he stood had ever been other than strangers. But perhaps her air was the inevitable result of the social rise which had advanced her from a cottage to a large house and fields. ”

“ The names remaining were called in the same manner.
"Now I think I have done with you," said Bathsheba, closing the book and shaking back a stray twine of hair. "Has William Smallbury returned?"
"No, ma'am."
"The new shepherd will want a man under him," suggested Henery Fray, trying to make himself official again by a sideway approach towards her chair.
"Oh -- he will. Who can he have?"
"Young Cain Ball is a very good lad," Henery said, "and Shepherd Oak don't mind his youth?" ”