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 one of these, pluck it off, and give it to his companion.

The dull sky soon began to tell its meaning by sending down herald-drops of rain, and the stagnant air of the day changed into a fitful breeze which played about their faces. The quicksilvery glaze on the rivers and pools vanished; from broad mirrors of light they changed to lustreless sheets of lead, with a surface like a rasp. But that spectacle did not affect her preoccupation. Her countenance, a natural carnation, slightly embrowned by the season, deepened on the cheeks with the beating of the rain-drops, and a portion of her hair, which the pressure of the cows’ flanks had, as usual, caused to tumble down from its fastenings, hung below the curtain of her calico bonnet; the rain began to make it clammy, till it hardly was better than seaweed.

‘I ought not to have come, I suppose,’ she murmured, looking at the sky.

‘I am sorry for the rain,’ said he. ‘But how glad I am to have you here!’

Remote Egdon disappeared by degrees behind the liquid gauze. The evening grew darker, and