“I think you ought to beg mine.”

“Very well—­as you like.  But we’ll see which is master here.  Be they all the sheaves you’ve done to-day?”

“Yes, sir.”

“’Tis a very poor show.  Just see what they’ve done over there” (pointing to the two stalwart women).  “The rest, too, have done better than you.”

“They’ve all practised it before, and I have not.  And I thought it made no difference to you as it is task work, and we are only paid for what we do.”

“Oh, but it does.  I want the barn cleared.”

“I am going to work all the afternoon instead of leaving at two as the others will do.”

He looked sullenly at her and went away.  Tess felt that she could not have come to a much worse place; but anything was better than gallantry.  When two o’clock arrived the professional reed-drawers tossed off the last half-pint in their flagon, put down their hooks, tied their last sheaves, and went away.  Marian and Izz would have done likewise, but on hearing that Tess meant to stay, to make up by longer hours for her lack of skill, they would not leave her.  Looking out at the snow, which still fell, Marian exclaimed, “Now, we’ve got it all to ourselves.”  And so at last the conversation turned to their old experiences at the dairy; and, of course, the incidents of their affection for Angel Clare.

“Izz and Marian,” said Mrs Angel Clare, with a dignity which was extremely touching, seeing how very little of a wife she was:  “I can’t join in talk with you now, as I used to do, about Mr Clare; you will see that I cannot; because, although he is gone away from me for the present, he is my husband.”

Izz was by nature the sauciest and most caustic of all the four girls who had loved Clare.  “He was a very splendid lover, no doubt,” she said; “but I don’t think he is a too fond husband to go away from you so soon.”

“He had to go—­he was obliged to go, to see about the land over there!” pleaded Tess.

“He might have tided ’ee over the winter.”

“Ah—­that’s owing to an accident—­a misunderstanding; and we won’t argue it,” Tess answered, with tearfulness in her words.  “Perhaps there’s a good deal to be said for him!  He did not go away, like some husbands, without telling me; and I can always find out where he is.”

After this they continued for some long time in a reverie, as they went on seizing the ears of corn, drawing out the straw, gathering it under their arms, and cutting off the ears with their bill-hooks, nothing sounding in the barn but the swish of the straw and the crunch of the hook.  Then Tess suddenly flagged, and sank down upon the heap of wheat-ears at her feet.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to stand it!” cried Marian.  “It wants harder flesh than yours for this work.”

Just then the farmer entered.  “Oh, that’s how you get on when I am away,” he said to her.

“But it is my own loss,” she pleaded.  “Not yours.”