Twenty-eight-year-old Gabriel Oak was surveying his fields one mild December morning. From behind a hedge, he watched a yellow wagon come down the highway, the wagoner walking beside it. When the wagoner retraced his path to retrieve a lost tailboard, the horses halted. This delay permitted Oak to view the wagon's motley array of household goods, complete with plants and pots. Enthroned atop everything sat a pretty, dark-haired young woman in a crimson jacket. Looking to make sure the wagoner was out of sight, she took out a mirror. Her smile, tentative at first, widened at her satisfying reflection. She flushed as "she simply observed herself as a fair product of Nature in the feminine kind." Hearing the wagoner return, she replaced the glass.