The Homestead: A Visitor: Half-Confidences
- Bathsheba and her servant Liddy are sitting on the floor of Bathsheba's bedroom and looking through a bunch of papers related to the farm. The narrator describes Liddy as a lighthearted English country girl.
- They hear someone riding a horse up to the door of the house, and Bathsheba sends a servant to go check it out.
- When the woman opens the door, a man with a low voice asks if Miss Everdene is at home. The guy is a rich neighbor named Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba doesn't want to see him, though, because she's not presentable.
- The man just wants to know if there's been any word about Fanny Robin.
- When Boldwood leaves, Bathsheba asks who he is, and her servants say that he's a handsome, respected man who's been courted by all the women of the neighborhood. But apparently this guy wants to stay a bachelor forever.
- Liddy asks, out of the blue, whether anyone has ever proposed to Bathsheba.
- Bathsheba says yeah, but that she said no because the man wasn't good enough for her. She's talking about Oak, btw.
- Bathsheba admits that she liked Oak. Oh yeah? That's kind of a shocker.
- Bathsheba doesn't tell Liddy that the man she's talking about is her new shepherd.
- The meeting is broken up by the arrival of Bathsheba's workmen, who have come to collect their wages. Without a bailiff anymore, Bathsheba is in charge of this business herself.