Page:Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891 Volume 1).pdf/231

 She drank a little milk as temporary refreshment—to the surprise—indeed, slight contempt—of Dairyman Crick, to whose mind it had apparently never occurred that milk was good as a beverage.

‘Oh, if ye can swaller that, be it so,’ he said indifferently, while holding up the pail that she sipped from. Tis what I haint touched for years—not I. Rot the stuff; it would lie in my innerds like lead. You can try your hand upon she,’ he pursued nodding to the nearest cow. ‘Not but what she do milk rather hard. We’ve hard ones and we’ve easy ones, like other folks. However, you’ll find out that soon enough.’

When Tess had changed her bonnet for a hood, and was really on her stool under the cow, and the milk was squirting from her fists into the pail, she appeared to feel that she really had laid a new foundation for her future. The conviction bred serenity, her pulse slowed, and she was able to look about her.

The milkers formed quite a little battalion of men and maids, the men operating on the hard-teated animals, the maids on the kindlier natures. It was a large dairy. There were more than a