XXIX––––––––
"NOW, WHO mid ye think I've heard news o' this morning?" said Dairyman Crick, as he sat down to breakfast next day, with a riddling gaze round upon the munching men and maids. "Now, just who mid ye think?"
One guessed, and another guessed. Mrs Crick did not guess, because she knew already.
"Well," said the dairyman, "'tis that slack-twisted 'hore's-bird of a feller, Jack Dollop. He's lately got married to a widow-woman."
"Not Jack Dollop? A villain—to think o' that!" said a milker.
The name entered quickly into Tess Durbeyfield's consciousness, for it was the name of the lover who had wronged his sweetheart, and had afterwards been so roughly used by the young woman's mother in the butter-churn.
"And had he married the valiant matron's daughter, as he promised?" asked An
