Far from the Madding Crowd Ch. 3 Summary

Thomas Hardy

The Hat, the Hut and the Warm Milk

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Summary

At daybreak Gabriel goes back to the plantation for no better reason than that the night's discovery happened there. He finds the girl's lost hat in the ditch, and he is about to hand it over when she rides up the path on an auburn pony and does something that stops him. The boughs are too low to ride beneath, so, after checking that nobody is watching, she drops flat along the pony's back with her head by its tail, as quick as a kingfisher. Once clear, she sits up again, astride because she has no side-saddle, and trots off to the mill for bran. Gabriel keeps the hat and keeps quiet, amused and a little astonished.

When she returns with her pail, he rises from behind the hedge, hat in hand. She is bright and sure of herself, and Hardy allows that she has reason. Their talk goes well enough until he tells her that he saw her ride through the plantation. She turns every shade of red, then slips away like a dead leaf. For five mornings and evenings she milks the cows without once looking his way. It was not that he saw her, Hardy says, but that he let her know it.

Then a hard frost comes. Gabriel closes the slide on the windward side of his hut and, instead of opening the other, sits down to let the stove warm the place first. He falls asleep. He wakes with his head in her lap and his face wet with the warm milk she threw over him, because his dog howled at the hut and pulled at her skirt. They part clumsily. He holds her hand too briefly, then too long, and she snatches it back from a kiss she has half offered. She will not tell him her name, only that he may ask at her aunt's. He knows the door.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Reading Tone Before Answering

Not every question wants the true answer. Bathsheba offers Gabriel a kiss on her hand, then punishes his plain reply when he treats the test as literal.

Before you answer in romance or office banter, decide whether they want facts or a scene, and refuse to trade integrity for a game you never agreed to play.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Bathsheba

She drops flat along the pony's back to clear the boughs, then sits up as if the hill had an audience. The hat he returns is only the prop. What she offers next, a kiss on the hand, is a scene that wants a performance back. His plain answer fails the test because she was not asking for a fact.

Continue this thoughtBathsheba Knows Love as Something to Watch

Coming Up in Chapter 4

Gabriel learns that the girl on the hill is Bathsheba Everdene, and he cannot stop watching for her at milking time. When her cow goes dry and she stops coming, he decides she must be his wife. He oils his hair, puts on a waistcoat patterned with flowers, and carries a lamb to her aunt's cottage as his excuse.

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Chapter 03

The Hat, the Hut and the Warm Milk

A GIRL ON HORSEBACK—CONVERSATION The sluggish day began to break. Even its position terrestrially is one of the elements of a new interest, and for no particular reason save that the incident of the night had occurred there Oak went again into the plantation. Lingering and musing here, he heard the steps of a horse at the foot of the hill, and soon there appeared in view an auburn pony with a girl on its back, ascending by the path leading past the cattle-shed. She was the young woman of the night before. Gabriel instantly thought of the hat she…

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The Hat, the Hut and the Warm Milk

Summary

Why This Matters