Thomas Hardy

“ Fancy reddened. Elizabeth seemed to be watching her thoughts. Really, one would almost think she must have the powers people ascribed to her.
“Father not in the humour for’t, hey?” Another potato was finished and flung in. “Ah, I know about it. Little birds tell me things that people don’t dream of my knowing.”
Fancy was desperate about Dick, and here was a chance—O, such a wicked chance—of getting help; and what was goodness beside love!
“I wish you’d tell me how to put him in the humour for it?” she said.
“That I could soon do,” said the witch quietly. ”

“ The trees of the fields and plantations writhed like miserable men as the air wound its way swiftly among them: the lowest portions of their trunks, that had hardly ever been known to move, were visibly rocked by the fiercer gusts, distressing the mind by its painful unwontedness, as when a strong man is seen to shed tears. ”

“ She makes pretence to common sense, And that’s all. “You must do it like this.” The witch laid down her knife and potato, and then poured into Fancy’s ear a long and detailed list of directions, glancing up from the corner of her eye into Fancy’s face with an expression of sinister humour. Fancy’s face brightened, clouded, rose and sank, as the narrative proceeded. “There,” said Elizabeth at length, stooping for the knife and another potato, “do that, and you’ll have him by-long and by-late, my dear.” ”