Page:Under the greenwood tree (1872 Volume 2).pdf/53

'Now, Richard Dewy, no touching me. I didn't say in what way your thinking of me affected the question—perhaps inversely, don't you see? No touching, sir! Look; goodness me, don't, Dick!'

The cause of her sudden start was the unpleasant appearance over Dick's right shoulder of an empty timber-wagon and four journeyman-carpenters reclining in lazy postures inside it, their eyes directed upwards at various oblique angles into the surrounding world, the chief object of their existence being apparently to criticise to the very backbone and marrow every animate object that came within the compass of their vision. This difficulty of Dick's was overcome by trotting on till the wagon and carpenters were beginning to look reduced in size and rather misty, by reason of a film of dust that accompanied their wagon-wheels, and rose around their heads like a fog.