“What—really now? And is it
so, maidy?” he said.
“A very easy way to feel ’em go,”
continued Tess, “is to lie on the grass at night
and look straight up at some big bright star; and,
by fixing your mind upon it, you will soon find that
you are hundreds and hundreds o’ miles away
from your body, which you don’t seem to want
at all.”
The dairyman removed his hard gaze from Tess, and
fixed it on his wife.
“Now that’s a rum thing, Christianer—hey?
To think o’ the miles I’ve vamped o’
starlight nights these last thirty year, courting,
or trading, or for doctor, or for nurse, and yet never
had the least notion o’ that till now, or feeled
my soul rise so much as an inch above my shirt-collar.”
The general attention being drawn to her, including
that of the dairyman’s pupil, Tess flushed,
and remarking evasively that it was only a fancy,
resumed her breakfast.
Clare continued to observe her. She soon finished
her eating, and having a consciousness that Clare
was regarding her, began to trace imaginary patterns
on the tablecloth with her forefinger with the constraint
of a domestic animal that perceives itself to be watched.
“What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature
that milkmaid is!” he said to himself.
And then he seemed to discern in her something that
was familiar, something which carried him back into
a joyous and unforeseeing past, before the necessity
of taking thought had made the heavens gray.
He concluded that he had beheld her before; where
he could not tell. A casual encounter during
some country ramble it certainly had been, and he
was not greatly curious about it. But the circumstance
was sufficient to lead him to select Tess in preference
to the other pretty milkmaids when he wished to contemplate
contiguous womankind.
In general the cows were milked as they presented
themselves, without fancy or choice. But certain
cows will show a fondness for a particular pair of
hands, sometimes carrying this predilection so far
as to refuse to stand at all except to their favourite,
the pail of a stranger being unceremoniously kicked
over.
It was Dairyman Crick’s rule to insist on breaking
down these partialities and aversions by constant
interchange, since otherwise, in the event of a milkman
or maid going away from the dairy, he was placed in
a difficulty. The maids’ private aims,
however, were the reverse of the dairyman’s
rule, the daily selection by each damsel of the eight
or ten cows to which she had grown accustomed rendering
the operation on their willing udders surprisingly
easy and effortless.
