The remark, singular for a dairy-yard, was murmured by the voice behind the dun cow; but as nobody understood the reference, no notice was taken, except that the narrator seemed to think it might imply scepticism as to his tale.
“Well, ’tis quite true, sir, whether or no. I knowed the man well.”
“Oh yes; I have no doubt of it,” said the person behind the dun cow.
Tess’s attention was thus attracted to the dairyman’s interlocutor, of whom she could see but the merest patch, owing to his burying his head so persistently in the flank of the milcher. She could not understand why he should be addressed as “sir” even by the dairyman himself. But no explanation was discernible; he remained under the cow long enough to have milked three, uttering a private ejaculation now and then, as if he cou
