Under the Greenwood Tree

"None from to-day," said Fancy. "Hark! what's that?" From a neighbouring thicket was suddenly heard to issue in a loud, musical, and liquid voice— "Tippiwit! swe-e-et! ki-ki-ki! Come hither, come hither, come hither!" "O, 'tis the nightingale," murmured she, and thought of a secret she would never tell.

Dick's courtship, Fancy's near-engagement to Maybold, and the spring-cart marriage close as pastoral comedy with one withheld secret — complete without tragic rupture, so plot scores 84.

Miss Fancy Day; as neat a little figure of fun as ever I see, and just husband-high." "Never Geoffrey's daughter Fancy?" said Bowman, as all glances present converged like wheel-spokes upon the boot in the centre of them.

Fancy, Dick, the quire, Shiner, and Maybold are typed but warmly individuated by dialect and craft — husband-high schoolmistress against young tranter — so cast scores 86.

On a cold and starry Christmas-eve within living memory a man was passing up a lane towards Mellstock Cross in the darkness of a plantation that whispered thus distinctively to his intelligence.

Seasonal parts with long quire, dance, and honey-taking passages between Christmas-eve and the Yalbury drive; village rhythm over thriller tempo, so pace scores 82.

All the evidences of his nature were those afforded by the spirit of his footsteps, which succeeded each other lightly and quickly, and by the liveliness of his voice as he sang in a rural cadence: "With the rose and the lily And the daffodowndilly, The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go."

Early Hardy rural cadence — plantation whisper, Christmas lane song, nightingale — paints Mellstock as Dutch-school genre scene rather than Egdon fatalism, so prose scores 88.

On a cold and starry Christmas-eve within living memory a man was passing up a lane towards Mellstock Cross in the darkness of a plantation that whispered thus distinctively to his intelligence.

Mellstock Cross, the tranter's, Fancy's school, and the vanishing parish quire are topographically precise Wessex village life, so world scores 90.

On a cold and starry Christmas-eve within living memory a man was passing up a lane towards Mellstock Cross in the darkness of a plantation that whispered thus distinctively to his intelligence.

Cold starry Christmas-eve and a singing walker in the whispering plantation establish Mellstock before Fancy is named — inviting pastoral rather than shock, so hook scores 84.

UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE or THE MELLSTOCK QUIRE A RURAL PAINTING OF THE DUTCH SCHOOL by Thomas Hardy

The Mellstock Quire as vanishing social organism and the Dutch-school subtitle mark Hardy's first major Wessex pastoral — lighter than later tragedies but already landscape-as-community, so innov scores 80.

"None from to-day," said Fancy. "Hark! what's that?" From a neighbouring thicket was suddenly heard to issue in a loud, musical, and liquid voice— "Tippiwit! swe-e-et! ki-ki-ki! Come hither, come hither, come hither!" "O, 'tis the nightingale," murmured she, and thought of a secret she would never tell.

Comic marital closure edged with a secret Fancy will never tell — Hardy's signature withheld confession inside pastoral happiness, so ending scores 85.