The conversation became inclusive, and presently other footsteps were

heard crossing the room below. "--

Being a few private friends asked in to-night to keep up

club-walking at my own expense." The landlady had rapidly re-used

the formula she kept on hand for intruders before she recognized that

the newcomer was Tess.

Even to her mother's gaze the girl's young features looked sadly

out of place amid the alcoholic vapours which floated here as

no unsuitable medium for wrinkled middle-age; and hardly was a

reproachful flash from Tess's dark eyes needed to make her father

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and mother rise from their seats, hastily finish their ale, and

descend the stairs behind her, Mrs Rolliver's caution following

their footsteps.

"No noise, please, if ye'll be so good, my dears; or I mid lose my

licends, and be summons'd, and I don't know what all! 'Night t'ye!"

They went home together, Tess holding one arm of her father, and Mrs

Durbeyfield the other. He had, in truth, drunk very little--not a

fourth of the quantity which a systematic tippler could carry to

church on a Sunday afternoon without a hitch in his eastings or

genuflections; but the weakness of Sir John's constitution made

mountains of his petty sins in this kind. On reaching the fresh

air he was sufficiently unsteady to incline the row of three at one

moment as if they were marching to London, and at another as if they

were marching to Bath--which produced a comical effect, frequent

enough in families on nocturnal homegoings; and, like most comical

effects, not quite so comic after all. The two women valiantly

disguised these forced excursions and countermarches as well as they

could from Durbeyfield, their cause, and from Abraham, and from

themselves; and so they approached by degrees their own door, the

head of the family bursting suddenly into his former refrain as he

drew near, as if to fortify his soul at sight of the smallness of

his present residence-"I've got a fam--ily vault at Kingsbere!"

"Hush--don't be so silly, Jacky," said his wife. "Yours is not the

only family that was of 'count in wold days. Look at the Anktells,

and Horseys, and the Tringhams themselves--gone to seed a'most as

much as you--though you was bigger folks than they, that's true.

Thank God, I was never of no family, and have nothing to be ashamed

of in that way!" "Don't you be so sure o' that. From you nater 'tis my belief you've

disgraced yourselves more than any o' us, and was kings and queens

outright at one time." Tess turned the subject by saying what was far more prominent in her

own mind at the moment than thoughts of her ancestry--"I am afraid

father won't be able to take the journey with the beehives to-morrow

so early."




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