In addition to Tess, Marian, and Izz, there were two women from a neighbouring village; two Amazonian sisters, whom Tess with a start remembered as Dark Car, the Queen of Spades, and her junior, the Queen of Diamonds—­those who had tried to fight with her in the midnight quarrel at Trantridge.  They showed no recognition of her, and possibly had none, for they had been under the influence of liquor on that occasion, and were only temporary sojourners there as here.  They did all kinds of men’s work by preference, including well-sinking, hedging, ditching, and excavating, without any sense of fatigue.  Noted reed-drawers were they too, and looked round upon the other three with some superciliousness.

Putting on their gloves, all set to work in a row in front of the press, an erection formed of two posts connected by a cross-beam, under which the sheaves to be drawn from were laid ears outward, the beam being pegged down by pins in the uprights, and lowered as the sheaves diminished.

The day hardened in colour, the light coming in at the barndoors upwards from the snow instead of downwards from the sky.  The girls pulled handful after handful from the press; but by reason of the presence of the strange women, who were recounting scandals, Marian and Izz could not at first talk of old times as they wished to do.  Presently they heard the muffled tread of a horse, and the farmer rode up to the barndoor.  When he had dismounted he came close to Tess, and remained looking musingly at the side of her face.  She had not turned at first, but his fixed attitude led her to look round, when she perceived that her employer was the native of Trantridge from whom she had taken flight on the high-road because of his allusion to her history.

He waited till she had carried the drawn bundles to the pile outside, when he said, “So you be the young woman who took my civility in such ill part?  Be drowned if I didn’t think you might be as soon as I heard of your being hired!  Well, you thought you had got the better of me the first time at the inn with your fancy-man, and the second time on the road, when you bolted; but now I think I’ve got the better you.”  He concluded with a hard laugh.

Tess, between the Amazons and the farmer, like a bird caught in a clap-net, returned no answer, continuing to pull the straw.  She could read character sufficiently well to know by this time that she had nothing to fear from her employer’s gallantry; it was rather the tyranny induced by his mortification at Clare’s treatment of him.  Upon the whole she preferred that sentiment in man and felt brave enough to endure it.

“You thought I was in love with ’ee I suppose?  Some women are such fools, to take every look as serious earnest.  But there’s nothing like a winter afield for taking that nonsense out o’ young wenches’ heads; and you’ve signed and agreed till Lady-Day.  Now, are you going to beg my pardon?”