But, perhaps irked by her snub, he maintained that she had her faults, the greatest of them being "what it is always. Gabriel did not disagree with the gamekeeper's comment on the attractiveness of the retreating girl. "She might have looked her thanks to Gabriel on a minute scale, but she did not speak them more probably, she felt none." Stepping forward, Gabriel handed two pence to the keeper, saying, "Let the young woman pass." The girl glanced carelessly at him. Unimpressed by the wagoner's protest that the girl refused to pay an additional two pence, the gatekeeper would not let the wagon pass. She flushed as "she simply observed herself as a fair product of Nature in the feminine kind." Hearing the wagoner return, she replaced the glass.Īfter the two resumed their journey, Gabriel left his "point of espial" and followed them down the road. Her smile, tentative at first, widened at her satisfying reflection. Looking to make sure the wagoner was out of sight, she took out a mirror. Enthroned atop everything sat a pretty, dark-haired young woman in a crimson jacket. This delay permitted Oak to view the wagon's motley array of household goods, complete with plants and pots. When the wagoner retraced his path to retrieve a lost tailboard, the horses halted. From behind a hedge, he watched a yellow wagon come down the highway, the wagoner walking beside it. Twenty-eight-year-old Gabriel Oak was surveying his fields one mild December morning.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |