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 So passed away Sorrow the Undesired—that intrusive creature, that bastard gift of shameless Nature who respects not the civil law; a waif to whom eternal Time had been a matter of days merely, who knew not that such things as years and centuries ever were; to whom the cottage interior was the universe, the week’s weather climate, new-born babyhood human existence, and the instinct to suck human knowledge.

Tess, who mused on the christening a good deal, wondered if it were doctrinally sufficient to secure a Christian burial for the child. Nobody could tell this but the parson of the parish, and he was a new-comer, and a very reserved man. She went to his house after dusk, and stood by the gate, but could not summon courage to go in. The enterprise would have been abandoned if she had not by accident met him coming homeward as she turned away. In the gloom she did not mind speaking freely.

‘I should like to ask you something, sir.’

He expressed his willingness to listen, and she told the story of the baby’s illness and the extemporized ordinance.

‘And now, sir,’ she added earnestly, ‘can you