Page:Far from the Madding Crowd Vol 1.djvu/54



only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is, as a rule, that of the unconscious kind, but a superiority which recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting at the same time possibilities of impropriation to the subordinated man.

This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads upon the emotional constitution of young Farmer Oak.

Love, being an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of exorbitant profit, spiritually, by an exchange of hearts, being at the bottom of pure passions, as that of exorbitant profit, bodily or materially, is at the bottom of those of lower atmosphere), every morning his feelings were as sensitive as the money-market in calculations upon his chances. His dog waited for his meals in a way so like that in which Oak waited for the girl's presence, that the farmer was quite struck