The dairyman paused, and one or two words of comment came from the
listeners.
Dairyman Crick's stories often seemed to be ended when they were not
really so, and strangers were betrayed into premature interjections
of finality; though old friends knew better. The narrator went on--
'Well, how the old woman should have had the wit to guess it I could
never tell, but she found out that he was inside that there churn.
Without saying a word she took hold of the winch (it was turned by
handpower then), and round she swung him, and Jack began to flop
about inside. 'O Lard! stop the churn! let me out!' says he, popping
out his head. 'I shall be churned into a pummy!' (He was a cowardly
chap in his heart, as such men mostly be). 'Not till ye make amends
for ravaging her virgin innocence!' says the old woman. 'Stop the
churn you old witch!' screams he. 'You call me old witch, do ye, you
deceiver!' says she, 'when ye ought to ha' been calling me mother-law
these last five months!' And on went the churn, and Jack's bones
rattled round again. Well, none of us ventured to interfere; and at
last 'a promised to make it right wi' her. 'Yes--I'll be as good as
my word!' he said. And so it ended that day.'
While the listeners were smiling their comments there was a
quick movement behind their backs, and they looked round. Tess,
pale-faced, had gone to the door.
'How warm 'tis to-day!' she said, almost inaudibly.
It was warm, and none of them connected her withdrawal with the
reminiscences of the dairyman. He went forward and opened the door
for her, saying with tender raillery--
'Why, maidy' (he frequently, with unconscious irony, gave her this
pet name), 'the prettiest milker I've got in my dairy; you mustn't
get so fagged as this at the first breath of summer weather, or we
shall be finely put to for want of 'ee by dog-days, shan't we, Mr
Clare?'
'I was faint--and--I think I am better out o' doors,' she said
mechanically; and disappeared outside.
Fortunately for her the milk in the revolving churn at that moment
changed its squashing for a decided flick-flack.
''Tis coming!' cried Mrs Crick, and the attention of all was called
off from Tess.
That fair sufferer soon recovered herself externally; but she
remained much depressed all the afternoon. When the evening milking
was done she did not care to be with the rest of them, and went out
of doors, wandering along she knew not whither. She was wretched--O
so wretched--at the perception that to her companions the dairyman's
story had been rather a humorous narration than otherwise; none of
them but herself seemed to see the sorrow of it; to a certainty, not
one knew how cruelly it touched the tender place in her experience.
The evening sun was now ugly to her, like a great inflamed wound in
the sky. Only a solitary cracked-voice reed-sparrow greeted her from
the bushes by the river, in a sad, machine-made tone, resembling that
of a past friend whose friendship she had outworn.
