 be gainsaid!« observed a brisk young man - Mark Clark
by name, a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere in your travels
was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink with was, unfortunately, to
pay for.
    »And here's a mouthful of bread and bacon that mis'ess have sent, shepherd.
The cider will go down better with a bit of victuals. Don't ye chaw quite close,
shepherd, for I let the bacon fall in the road outside as I was bringing it
along, and may be 'tis rather gritty. There, 'tis clane dirt; and we all know
what that is, as you say, and you bain't a particular man we see, shepherd.«
    »True, true - not at all,« said the friendly Oak.
    »Don't let your teeth quite meet, and you won't feel the sandiness at all.
Ah! 'tis wonderful what can be done by contrivance!«
    »My own mind exactly, neighbour.«
 
»Ah, he's his grandfer's own grandson! - his grandfer were just such a nice
unparticular man!« said the maltster.
    »Drink, Henry Fray - drink,« magnanimously said Jan Coggan, a person who
held Saint-Simonian notions of share and share alike where liquor was concerned,
as the vessel showed signs of approaching him in its gradual revolution among
them.
    Having at this moment reached the end of a wistful gaze into mid-air, Henry
did not refuse. He was a man of more than middle age, with eyebrows high up in
his forehead, who laid it down that the law of the world was bad, with a
long-suffering look through his listeners at the world alluded to, as it
presented itself to his imagination. He always signed his name Henery -
strenuously insisting upon that spelling, and if any passing schoolmaster
ventured to remark that the second e was superfluous and old-fashioned, he
received the reply that H-e-n-e-r-y was the name he was christened and the name
he would stick to - in the tone of one to whom orthographical differences were
matters which had a great deal to do with personal character.
    Mr. Jan Coggan, who had passed the cup to Henery, was a crimson man with a
spacious countenance and private glimmer in his eye, whose name had appeared on
the marriage register of Weatherbury and neighbouring parishes as best man and
chief witness in countless unions of the previous twenty years;
