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Updated: September 3, 2025
However, they formed themselves into line, all assisting, owing to the importance of the search; the dairyman at the upper end with Mr Clare, who had volunteered to help; then Tess, Marian, Izz Huett, and Retty; then Bill Lewell, Jonathan, and the married dairywomen Beck Knibbs, with her wooly black hair and rolling eyes; and flaxen Frances, consumptive from the winter damps of the water-meads who lived in their respective cottages.
Each one was a girl of fair common sense, and she did not delude herself with any vain conceits, or deny her love, or give herself airs, in the idea of outshining the others. They tossed and turned on their little beds, and the cheese-wring dripped monotonously downstairs. "B' you awake, Tess?" whispered one, half-an-hour later. It was Izz Huett's voice.
Izz mentioned the omission of the banns to Mrs Crick, and Mrs Crick assumed a matron's privilege of speaking to Angel on the point. "Have ye forgot 'em, Mr Clare? The banns, I mean." "No, I have not forgot 'em," says Clare. As soon as he caught Tess alone he assured her: "Don't let them tease you about the banns.
Even Izz hoped she would win, and, though without any particular respect for her own virtue, felt glad that she had been prevented wronging her friend when momentarily tempted by Clare. It was a year ago, all but a day, that Clare had married Tess, and only a few days less than a year that he had been absent from her.
Dairyman Crick and his wife, the milkmaids Tess, Marian, Retty Priddle, Izz Huett, and the married ones from the cottages; also Mr Clare, Jonathan Kail, old Deborah, and the rest, stood gazing hopelessly at the churn; and the boy who kept the horse going outside put on moon-like eyes to show his sense of the situation.
Izz Huett was the next in order upon the bank. "Here he comes," she murmured, and they could hear that her lips were dry with emotion. "And I have to put my arms round his neck and look into his face as Marian did." "There's nothing in that," said Tess quickly. "There's a time for everything," continued Izz, unheeding.
As for the Wazir's daughter, when her tale of months was fulfilled, she bare a son like the full moon, the image of his father in beauty and loveliness and fair proportions and perfect grace. I am the son of Wazir of Egypt!" And they all cried, "By Allah, good!" Then quoth one of them, "My name is Majid and my mammy's name is Alawiyah and my daddy's Izz al-Din."
Clare, too, after bidding the girl farewell, was wrought to aching thoughts and quivering lips. But his sorrow was not for Izz. That evening he was within a feather-weight's turn of abandoning his road to the nearest station, and driving across that elevated dorsal line of South Wessex which divided him from his Tess's home.
"Marian and Izz!" she cried to the girls, for it was they, sitting with the moving family at whose house they had lodged. "Are you house-ridding to-day, like everybody else?" They were, they said. It had been too rough a life for them at Flintcomb-Ash, and they had come away, almost without notice, leaving Groby to prosecute them if he chose.
He was dressed in a tweed suit of fashionable pattern, and he twirled a gay walking-cane. "Who is that?" said Izz Huett to Marian. She had at first addressed the inquiry to Tess, but the latter could not hear it. "Somebody's fancy-man, I s'pose," said Marian laconically. "I'll lay a guinea he's after Tess." "O no. 'Tis a ranter pa'son who's been sniffing after her lately; not a dandy like this."
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