 by whose assistance
they so largely profited, and the innovations were allowed to stand.
    There was, it is true, a limit to this tendency to uniformity. The Leech or
Doctor preserved his character intact: his darker habiliments, peculiar hat, and
the bottle of physic slung under his arm, could never be mistaken. And the same
might be said of the conventional figure of Father Christmas, with his gigantic
club, an older man, who accompanied the band as general protector in long night
journeys from parish to parish, and was bearer of the purse.
    Seven o'clock, the hour of the rehearsal, came round, and in a short time
Eustacia could hear voices in the fuel-house. To dissipate in some trifling
measure her abiding sense of the murkiness of human life she went to the linhay
or lean-to shed, which formed the root-store of their dwelling and abutted on
the fuel-house. Here was a small rough hole in the mud wall, originally made for
pigeons, through which the interior of the next shed could be viewed. A light
came from it now; and Eustacia stepped upon a stool to look in upon the scene.
    On a ledge in the fuel-house stood three tall rushlights, and by the light
of them seven or eight lads were marching about, haranguing, and confusing each
other, in endeavours to perfect themselves in the play. Humphrey and Sam, the
furze and turf cutters, were there looking on, so also was Timothy Fairway, who
leant against the wall and prompted the boys from memory, interspersing among
the set words remarks and anecdotes of the superior days when he and others were
the Egdon mummers-elect that these lads were now.
    »Well, ye be as well up to it as ever ye will be,« he said. »Not that such
mumming would have passed in our time. Harry as the Saracen should strut a bit
more, and John needn't holler his inside out. Beyond that perhaps you'll do.
Have you got all your clothes ready?«
    »We shall by Monday.«
    »Your first outing will be Monday night, I suppose?«
    »Yes. At Mrs. Yeobright's.«
    »Oh, Mrs. Yeobright's. What makes her want to see ye? I should think a
middle-aged woman was tired of mumming.«
    »She's got up a bit of a party, because 'tis the first Christmas that her
son Clym has been home for a long time.«
    »To be sure, to
