Page:Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891 Volume 2).pdf/19

‘Ah yes, yes!—but that isn’t the rights o’t. It had nothing to do with the love-making. I remember all about it—’twas the damage to the churn.

He turned to Clare.

‘Jack Dollop, a ’hor’s-bird of a fellow we had here as milker at one time, sir, courted a young woman over at Mellstock, and deceived her as he had deceived many afore. But he had another sort o’ woman to reckon with this time, and it was not the girl herself. One Holy Thursday, of all days in the almanack, we was here as we mid be now, only there was no churning in hand, when we saw the girl’s mother coming up to the door, with a great brass-mounted umbrella in her hand that would have felled an ox, and saying “Do Jack Dollop work here?—because I want him! I have a big bone to pick with he, I can assure ’n!” And some way behind her mother walked Jack’s young woman, crying bitterly into her handkercher. “O, Lard, here’s a time!” said Jack, looking out o’ winder at ’em. “She’ll murder me! Where shall I get—where shall I———? Don’t tell her where I be!” And with that he scrambled into the churn through the trap-door,