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.
In these long June days the milkmaids, and, indeed, most of the household, went to bed at sunset or sooner, the morning work before milking being so early and heavy at a time of full pails. Tess usually accompanied her fellows upstairs.
To-night, however, she was the first to go to their common chamber; and she had dozed when the other girls came in.
She saw them undressing in the orange light of the vanished sun, which flushed their forms with its colour; she dozed again, but she was reawakened by their voices, and quietly turned her eyes towards them.
Neither of her three chamber-companions had got into bed.
They were standing in a group, in their nightgowns, barefooted, at the window, the last red rays of the west still warming their faces and necks and the walls around them.
All were watching somebody in the garden with deep interest, their three faces close together: a jovial and round one, a pale one with dark hair, and a fair one whose tresses were auburn.
"Don't push!
You can see as well as I," said Retty, the auburn-haired and youngest girl, without removing her eyes from the window.
"'Tis no use for you to be in love with him any more than me, Retty Priddle," said jolly-faced Marian, the eldest, slily. "His thoughts be of other cheeks than thine!"
Retty Priddle still looked, and the others looked again.
"There he is again!" cried Izz Huett, the pale girl with dark damp hair and keenly cut lips.
"You needn't say anything, Izz," answered Retty.
"For I zid you kissing his shade."
"WHAT did you see her doing?" asked Marian.
"Why-he was standing over the whey-tub to let off the whey, and the shade of his face came upon the wall behind, close to Izz, who was standing there filling a vat.
She put her mouth against the wall and kissed the shade of his mouth; I zid her, though he didn't."
"O Izz Huett!" said Marian.
A rosy spot came into the middle of Izz Huett's cheek.
"Well, there was no harm in it," she declared, with attempted coolness.
"And if I be in love wi'en, so is Retty, too; and so be you, Marian, come to that."
Marian's full face could not blush past its chronic pinkness.
"I!" she said.
"What a tale!
Ah, there he is again!
Dear eyes-dear face-dear Mr Clare!"
"There-you've owned it!"
"So have you-so have we all," said Marian, with the dry frankness of complete indifference to opinion.
"It is silly to pretend otherwise amongst ourselves, though we need not own it to other folks.
I would just marry 'n to-morrow!"
"So would I-and more," murmured Izz Huett.
"And I too," whispered the more timid Retty.
The listener grew warm.
"We can't all marry him," said Izz.
"We shan't, either of us; which is worse still," said the eldest.
"There he is again!"
They all three blew him a silent kiss.
"Why?" asked Retty quickly.
"Because he likes Tess Durbeyfield best," said Marian, lowering her voice.
"I have watched him every day, and have found it out."
There was a reflective silence.
"But she don't care anything for 'n?" at length breathed Retty.