Later in the day Sam, the turf-cutter, entered. “I’ve come a-borrowing, Mrs. Yeobright. I suppose you have heard what’s been happening to the beauty on the hill?”
“Yes, Sam: half a dozen have been telling us.”
“Beauty?” said Clym.
“Yes, tolerably well-favoured,” Sam replied. “Lord! all the country owns that ‘tis one of the strangest things in the world that such a woman should have come to live up there.”
“Dark or fair?”
“Now, though I’ve seen her twenty times, that’s a thing I cannot call to mind.”
“Darker than Tamsin,” murmured Mrs. Yeobright.
“A woman who seems to care for nothing at all, as you may say.”
“She is melancholy, then?” inquired Clym.
“She mopes about by herself, and don’t mix in with the people.”
“Is she a young lady inclined for adventures?”
“Not to my knowledge
