4—The Halt on the Turnpike Road

Down, downward they went, and yet further down—their descent at each step seeming to outmeasure their advance. Their skirts were scratched noisily by the furze, their shoulders [bad word] by the ferns, which, though dead and dry, stood erect as when alive, no sufficient winter weather having as yet arrived to beat them down. Their Tartarean situation might by some have been called an [bad word] one for two unattended women. But these shaggy recesses were at all seasons a familiar surrounding to Olly and Mrs. Yeobright; and the addition of darkness lends no frightfulness to the face of a friend.

"And so Tamsin has married him at last," said Olly, when the incline had [bad word] so much less steep that their foot-steps no longer required undivided attention.

Mrs. Yeobright answered slowly, "Yes; at last."

"How you will miss her—living with 'ee as a daughter, as she always have."

"I do miss her."

Olly, though without the tact to perceive when remarks were untimely, was saved by her very simplicity from rendering them offensive. Questions that would have been resented in others she could ask with impunity. This accounted for Mrs. Yeobright's acquiescence in the revival of an evidently sore subject.

"I was quite strook to hear you'd agreed to it, ma'am, that I was," continued the besom-maker.

"You were not more [bad word] by it than I should have been last year this time, Olly. There are a good many sides to that wedding. I could not tell you all of them, even if I tried."

"I felt myself that he was hardly solid-going enough to mate with your family. Keeping an inn—what is it? But 'a's clever, that's [bad word]  and they say he was an engineering gentleman once, but [bad word] down by being too outwardly given."

"I saw that, upon the whole, it would be better she should marry where she wished."

"Poor little thing, her feelings got the better of her, no doubt. 'Tis nature. Well, they may call him what they will—he've several acres of heth-ground broke up here, besides the public house, and the heth-croppers, and his manners be quite like a gentleman's. And what's done cannot be undone."

"It cannot," said Mrs. Yeobright. "See, here's the wagon-track at last. Now we shall get along better."

The wedding subject was no further dwelt upon; and soon a faint diverging path was reached, where they [bad word]  Olly first begging [bad word] to remind Mr. Wildeve that he had not sent her sick husband the bottle of wine promised on the occasion of his marriage.