Thomas Hardy

“ But she’s queer,—very queer, at times!”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yes: there; wives be such a provoking class o’ society, because though they be never right, they be never more than half wrong.”
Fancy seemed uneasy under the infliction of this household moralizing, which might tend to damage the airy-fairy nature that Dick, as maiden shrewdness told her, had accredited her with. Her dead silence impressed Geoffrey with the notion that something in his words did not agree with her educated ideas, and he changed the conversation. ”

“ Geoffrey placidly cut a slice with the new knife and fork, and asked Dick if he wanted any more.
The table had been spread for the mixed midday meal of dinner and tea, which was common among frugal countryfolk. “The parishioners about here,” continued Mrs. Day, not looking at any living being, but snatching up the brown delf tea-things, “are the laziest, gossipest, poachest, jailest set of any ever I came among. And they’ll talk about my teapot and tea-things next, I suppose!” ”

“ He is as true as the town time. How is it your stap-mother isn’t here?”
As Fancy was about to reply, the rattle of wheels was heard, and “Weh-hey, Smart!” in Mr. Richard Dewy’s voice rolled into the cottage from round the corner of the house.
“Hullo! there’s Dewy’s cart come for thee, Fancy—Dick driving—afore time, too. Well, ask the lad to have pot-luck with us.”
Dick on entering made a point of implying by his general bearing that he took an interest in Fancy simply as in one of the same race and country as himself; and they all sat down. ”

“ Their long acquaintance with each other’s ways, and the nature of their labours, rendered words between them almost superfluous as vehicles of thought, whilst the coincidence of their horizons, and the astonishing equality of their social views, by startling the keeper from time to time as very damaging to the theory of master and man, strictly forbade any indulgence in words as courtesies. ”

“ And you know en very well too, don’t ye, Fancy?”
Geoffrey put on a tone expressing that these words signified at present about one hundred times the amount of meaning they conveyed literally.
Dick looked anxious.
“Will you pass me some bread?” said Fancy in a flurry, the red of her face becoming slightly disordered, and looking as solicitous as a human being could look about a piece of bread.
“Ay, that I will,” replied the unconscious Geoffrey. “Ay,” he continued, returning to the displaced idea, “we are likely to remain friendly wi’ Mr. Shiner if the wheels d’run smooth.” ”

“ Although not an extraordinarily taciturn man among friends slightly richer than himself, he never wasted words upon outsiders, and to his trapper Enoch his ideas were seldom conveyed by any other means than nods and shakes of the head. ”

“ These she flounced down into a chair; then took one, shook it out from its folds, and spread it on the table by instalments, transferring the plates and dishes one by one from the old to the new cloth.
“And I suppose they’ll say, too, that she ha’n’t a decent knife and fork in her house!”
“I shouldn’t say any such ill-natured thing, I am sure—” began Dick. But Mrs. Day had vanished into the next room. Fancy appeared distressed.
“Very strange woman, isn’t she?” said Geoffrey, quietly going on with his dinner. “But ’tis too late to attempt curing. My heart! ”

“ Yes: you see her first husband was a young man, who let her go too far; in fact, she used to kick up Bob’s-a-dying at the least thing in the world. And when I’d married her and found it out, I thought, thinks I, ‘’Tis too late now to begin to cure ’e;’ and so I let her bide. ”