`Well, then, that's my age,' said the maltster emphatically.
`O no, father!' said Jacob. `Your turnip-hoeing were in the summer and your malting in the winter of the same years, and ye don't ought to count both halves, father.'
`Chok' it all! I lived through the summers, didn't I? That's my question.
I suppose ye'll say next I be no age at all to speak of?'
`Sure we shan't,' said Gabriel soothingly.
`Ye be a very old aged person, malter,' attested Jan Coggan, also soothingly.
`We all know that, and ye must have a wonderful talented constitution to be able to live so long, mustn't he, neighbours?'
`True, true; ye must, malter, wonderful'; said the meeting unanimously.
The maltster, being now pacified, was even generous enough to voluntarily disparage in a slight degree the virtue of having lived a great many years, by mentioning that the cup they were drinking out of was three years older than he.
While the cup was being examined, the end of Gabriel Oak's flute became visible over his smock-frock pocket, and Henery Fray exclaimed, `Surely, shepherd, I seed you blowing into a great flute by now at Casterbridge?'
`You did,' said Gabriel, blushing faintly. `I've been in great trouble, neighbours, and was driven to it. I used not to be so poor as I be now.'
`Never mind, heart!' said Mark Clark. `You should take it carelesslike, shepherd, and your time will come. But we could thank ye for a tune, if ye bain't too tired?'
`Neither drum nor trumpet have I heard since Christmas,' said Jan Coggan.
`Come, raise a tune, Master Oak!'
`That I will,' said Gabriel, pulling out his flute and putting it together.
`A poor tool, neighbours; but such as I can do ye shall have and welcome.'
Oak then struck up `Jockey to the Fair', and played that sparkling melody three times through, ascending the notes in the third round in a most artistic and lively manner by bending his body in small jerks and tapping with his foot to beat time.
`He can blow the flute very well - that 'a can,' said a young married man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as `Susan Tall's husband'. He continued, `I'd as lief as not be able to blow into a flute as well as that.'
`He's a clever man, and 'tis a true comfort for us to have such a shepherd,' murmured Joseph Poorgrass, in a soft cadence. `We ought to feel fill o' thanksgiving that he's not a player of ba'dy songs instead of these merry tunes; for 'twould have been just as easy for God to have made the shepherd a loose low man - a man of iniquity, so to speak it - as what he is. Yes, for our wives' and daughters' sakes we should feel real thanksgiving.'
`True, true - real thanksgiving!' dashed in Mark Clark conclusively, not feeling it to be of any consequence to his opinion that he had only heard about a word and three-quarters of what Joseph had said.
`Yes,' added Joseph, beginning to feel like a man in the Bible; `for evil do thrive so in these times that ye may be as much deceived in the clanest shaved and whitest shirted man as in the raggedest tramp upon the turnpike, if I may term it so.'
`Ay, I can mind yer face now, shepherd,' said Henery Fray, criticizing Gabriel with misty eyes as he entered upon his second tune. `Yes - now I see 'ee blowing into the flute I know 'ee to be the same man I see play at Casterbridge, for yer mouth were scrimped up and yer eyes a staring out like a strangled man's - just as they be now.'
`'Tis a pity that playing the flute should make a man look such a scarecrow, observed Mr Mark Clark, with additional criticism of Gabriel's countenance, the latter person jerking out, with the ghastly grimace required by the instrument, the chorus of `Dame Durden':-- `Twas Moll' and Bet', and Doll' and Kate', And Dorothy Drag'-gle Tail'. `I hope you don't mind that young man's bad manners in naming your features?' whispered Joseph to Gabriel.
`Not at all,' said Mr Oak.
`For by nature ye be a very handsome man, shepherd,' continued Joseph Poorgrass with winning suavity.
`Ay, that ye be, shepherd,' said the company.
`Thank you very much,' said Oak, in the modest tone good manners demanded, thinking, however, that he would never let Bathsheba see him playing the flute; in this resolve showing a discretion equal to that related of its sagacious inventress, the divine Minerva herself.
`Ah, when I and my wife were married at Norcombe Church,' said the old maltster, not pleased at finding himself left out of the subject, `we were called the handsomest couple in the neighbourhood everybody said so.'
`Danged if ye bain't altered now, malter,' said a voice with the vigour natural to the enunciation of a remarkable evident truism. It came from the old man in the background, whose offensiveness and spiteful ways were barely atoned for by the occasional chuckle he contributed to general laughs.
`O no, no,' said Gabriel.
`Don't ye play no more, shepherd,' said Susan Tall's husband, the young married man who had spoken once before. `I must be moving, and when there's tunes going on I seem as if hung in wires. If I thought after I'd left that music was still playing, and I not there, I should be quite melancholy-like.'
`What's yer hurry then, Laban?' inquired Coggan. `You used to bide as late as the latest.'
`Well, ye see, neighbours, I was lately married to a woman, and she's my vocation now, and so ye see--' The young man halted lamely.
`New lords new laws, as the saying is, I suppose,' remarked Coggan.
`Ay, 'a b'lieve - ha, ha!' said Susan Tall's husband, in a tone intended to imply his habitual reception of jokes without minding them at all. The young man then wished them good-night and withdrew.
