 quite the
dand. He now wears shining boots with hardly a hob in 'em, two or three times
a-week, and a tall hat a-Sundays, and 'a hardly knows the name of smockfrock.
When I see people strut enough to be cut up into bantam cocks, I stand dormant
with wonder, and says no more!«
    It was eventually known that Gabriel, though paid a fixed wage by Bathsheba
independent of the fluctuations of agricultural profits, had made an engagement
with Boldwood by which Oak was to receive a share of the receipts - a small
share certainly, yet it was money of a higher quality than mere wages, and
capable of expansion in a way that wages were not. Some were beginning to
consider Oak a near man, for though his condition had thus far improved, he
lived in no better style than before, occupying the same cottage, paring his own
potatoes, mending his stockings, and sometimes even making his bed with his own
hands. But as Oak was not only provokingly indifferent to public opinion, but a
man who clung persistently to old habits and usages, simply because they were
old, there was room for doubt as to his motives.
    A great hope had latterly germinated in Boldwood, whose unreasoning devotion
to Bathsheba could only be characterized as a fond madness which neither time
nor circumstance, evil nor good report, could weaken or destroy. This fevered
hope had grown up again like a grain of mustard-seed during the quiet which
followed the hasty conjecture that Troy was drowned. He nourished it fearfully,
and almost shunned the contemplation of it in earnest, lest facts should reveal
the wildness of the dream. Bathsheba having at last been persuaded to wear
mourning, her appearance as she entered the church in that guise was in itself a
weekly addition to his faith that a time was coming - very far off perhaps, yet
surely nearing - when his waiting on events should have its reward. How long he
might have to wait he had not yet closely considered. What he would try to
recognize was that the severe schooling she had been subjected to had made
Bathsheba much more considerate than she had formerly been of the feelings of
others, and he trusted that, should she be willing at any time in the future to
marry any man at all, that man would be himself. There was a substratum of good
feeling in her: her self-reproach for the injury she had thoughtlessly done him
might be depended upon now to a much greater extent than before her infatuation
and disappointment. It would be possible to approach her by the channel of
