Thomas Hardy: The Woodlanders

6. CHAPTER VI. (continued)

"I don't think so." Grace did not say "Why?" and Grammer hesitated. At last she went on: "Don't tell your father or mother, miss, if I let you know a secret."

Grace gave the required promise.

"Well, he talks of buying me; so he won't go away just yet."

"Buying you!--how?"

"Not my soul--my body, when I'm dead. One day when I was there cleaning, he said, 'Grammer, you've a large brain--a very large organ of brain,' he said. 'A woman's is usually four ounces less than a man's; but yours is man's size.' Well, then--hee, hee!-- after he'd flattered me a bit like that, he said he'd give me ten pounds to have me as a natomy after my death. Well, knowing I'd no chick nor chiel left, and nobody with any interest in me, I thought, faith, if I can be of any use to my fellow-creatures after I'm gone they are welcome to my services; so I said I'd think it over, and would most likely agree and take the ten pounds. Now this is a secret, miss, between us two. The money would be very useful to me; and I see no harm in it."

"Of course there's no harm. But oh, Grammer, how can you think to do it? I wish you hadn't told me."

"I wish I hadn't--if you don't like to know it, miss. But you needn't mind. Lord--hee, hee!--I shall keep him waiting many a year yet, bless ye!"

"I hope you will, I am sure."

The girl thereupon fell into such deep reflection that conversation languished, and Grammer Oliver, taking her candle, wished Miss Melbury good-night. The latter's eyes rested on the distant glimmer, around which she allowed her reasoning fancy to play in vague eddies that shaped the doings of the philosopher behind that light on the lines of intelligence just received. It was strange to her to come back from the world to Little Hintock and find in one of its nooks, like a tropical plant in a hedge-row, a nucleus of advanced ideas and practices which had nothing in common with the life around. Chemical experiments, anatomical projects, and metaphysical conceptions had found a strange home here.