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A man was turning the handle of the machine, and from its trough came the newly-cut swedes, the fresh smell of whose yellow chips was accompanied by the sounds of the snuffling wind, the smart swish of the slicing-blades, and the choppings of the hook in Tess's leather-gloved hand.
Every day brought new revelations of Gypsy's intelligence. Missy took to spending every spare minute at Tess's. Under this new captivation her own pet, Poppy, was thoughtlessly neglected. And duties such as practicing, dusting and darning were deliberately shirked.
Her mother bore Tess no ill-will for leaving the housework to her single-handed efforts for so long; indeed, Joan seldom upbraided her thereon at any time, feeling but slightly the lack of Tess's assistance whilst her instinctive plan for relieving herself of her labours lay in postponing them. To-night, however, she was even in a blither mood than usual.
"No," denied Tess authoritatively, "you've got nut-brown locks. And your eyes, too, are something like Phyllis's eyes great grey eyes with subtle depths. Only yours haven't got saucy hints in them." Missy wished her eyes included the saucy hints. However, she was enthralled by Tess's comparison, though incomplete. Was it possible Tess was right?
After her first burst of disappointment Joan began to take the mishap as she had taken Tess's original trouble, as she would have taken a wet holiday or failure in the potato-crop; as a thing which had come upon them irrespective of desert or folly; a chance external impingement to be borne with; not a lesson.
It came from the bedroom window, and a branch waved in front of it and made it wink at her. As soon as she could discern the outline of the house newly thatched with her money it had all its old effect upon Tess's imagination.
As Tess had wished that no great publicity should be given to the event, he had mentioned no particulars. He hoped she would remove that prohibition soon. He proposed that the couple should take Tess's own name, d'Urberville, as uncorrupted. It was better than her husbands's. He asked if any letter had come from her that day.
The Marble Hearts would give a dinner-party! The Marble Hearts were Missy's "crowd," thus named after Tess had joined it. Of course, said Tess, they must have a name. A fascinating fount of ideas was Tess's. She declared, now, that they MUST give a dinner-party, a regular six o'clock function. Life for the younger set in Cherryvale was so bourgeois, so ennuye.
Even the Evans elopement brought no thrill; the affair of a youth who clerks in a bank and a girl who works in a post office is tame business to one who has been participating in the panoplied romances of the high-born. Missy lived, those days, to dream in solitude or to go to Tess's where she might read of further enchantments.
She clasped a diamond necklace around Tess's neck, and watched it gleam and sparkle in the refracted sunlight. "Don't you love it? Aren't they perfect? And now you've a great big draft of money, so I suppose you're both off to America, and good-by to me forever?" "For a long time." "But why such a long time? You must come again soon. Come next year. You and I love each other.
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