"Whatever d'ye think." said Susan Tall," Gable Oak
is coming it quite the dand. He now wears shining
boots with hardly a hob in 'em, two or three times
a-week, and a tall hat a-Sundays, and 'a hardly knows
the name of smockfrock. When I see people strut
enough to he cut up into bantam cocks, I stand
dormant with wonder, and says no more!"
It was eventually known that Gabriel, though paid
a fixed wage by Bathsheba independent of the fluctua-
tions of agricultural profits, had made an engagement
with Boldwood by which Oak was to receive a share
of the receipts -- a small share certainly, yet it was
money of a higher quality than mere wages, and
capable of expansion in a way that wages were not.
Some were beginning to consider Oak a "near" man,
for though his condition had thus far improved, he
lived in no better style than before, occupying the
same cottage, paring his own potatoes, mending his
stockings, and sometimes even making his bed with
his own hands. But as Oak was not only provokingly
indifferent to public opinion, but a man who clung
persistently to old habits and usages, simply because
they were old, there was room for doubt as to his
motives.
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