The remark, singular for a dairy-yard, was murmured by the voice

behind the dun cow; but as nobody understood the reference, no notice

was taken, except that the narrator seemed to think it might imply

scepticism as to his tale.

"Well, 'tis quite true, sir, whether or no. I knowed the man well."

"Oh yes; I have no doubt of it," said the person behind the dun cow.

Tess's attention was thus attracted to the dairyman's interlocutor,

of whom she could see but the merest patch, owing to his burying his

head so persistently in the flank of the milcher. She could not

understand why he should be addressed as "sir" even by the dairyman

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himself. But no explanation was discernible; he remained under the

cow long enough to have milked three, uttering a private ejaculation

now and then, as if he could not get on.

"Take it gentle, sir; take it gentle," said the dairyman. "'Tis

knack, not strength, that does it."

"So I find," said the other, standing up at last and stretching his

arms. "I think I have finished her, however, though she made my

fingers ache."

Tess could then see him at full length. He wore the ordinary white

pinner and leather leggings of a dairy-farmer when milking, and his

boots were clogged with the mulch of the yard; but this was all his

local livery. Beneath it was something educated, reserved, subtle,

sad, differing. But the details of his aspect were temporarily thrust aside by

the discovery that he was one whom she had seen before. Such

vicissitudes had Tess passed through since that time that for a

moment she could not remember where she had met him; and then it

flashed upon her that he was the pedestrian who had joined in the

club-dance at Marlott--the passing stranger who had come she knew

not whence, had danced with others but not with her, and slightingly

left her, and gone on his way with his friends.

The flood of memories brought back by this revival of an incident

anterior to her troubles produced a momentary dismay lest,

recognizing her also, he should by some means discover her story.

But it passed away when she found no sign of remembrance in him. She

saw by degrees that since their first and only encounter his mobile

face had grown more thoughtful, and had acquired a young man's

shapely moustache and beard--the latter of the palest straw colour

where it began upon his cheeks, and deepening to a warm brown farther

from its root. Under his linen milking-pinner he wore a dark

velveteen jacket, cord breeches and gaiters, and a starched white

shirt. Without the milking-gear nobody could have guessed what

he was. He might with equal probability have been an eccentric

landowner or a gentlemanly ploughman. That he was but a novice at

dairy work she had realized in a moment, from the time he had spent

upon the milking of one cow.




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