He held out his hand to take hers, which, when she had eased her side by pressing it there, was prettily extended upon her bosom to still her loud-beating heart.

Directly he seized it she put it behind her, so that it slipped through his fingers like an eel." "I have a nice snug little farm," said Gabriel, with half a degree less assurance than when he had seized her hand.
"Yes; you have." "A man has advanced me money to begin with, but still, it will soon be paid off, and though I am only an every-day sort of man, I have got on a little since I was a boy." Gabriel uttered "a little" in a tone to show her that it was the complacent form of "a great deal." He continued: "When we be married, I am quite sure I can work twice as hard as I do now." He went forward and stretched out his arm again.

Bathsheba had overtaken him at a point beside which stood a low stunted holly bush, now laden with red berries.

Seeing his advance take the form of an attitude threatening a possible enclosure, if not compression, of her person, she edged off round the bush.
"Why, Farmer Oak," she said, over the top, looking at him with rounded eyes, "I never said I was going to marry you." "Well--that IS a tale!" said Oak, with dismay.

"To run after anybody like this, and then say you don't want him!" "What I meant to tell you was only this," she said eagerly, and yet half conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made for herself--"that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart, instead of my having a dozen, as my aunt said; I HATE to be thought men's property in that way, though possibly I shall be had some day.