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 ‘All the same, I shouldn’t have expected a young girl like you to see it so just yet. How is it you do?’

She maintained a hesitating silence.

‘Come, Tess, tell me in confidence.’

She thought that he meant what were the aspects of things to her, and replied shyly—

‘The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven’t they?—that is, seem as if they had. And the river says,—“Why do ye trouble me with your looks?” And you seem to see numbers of to-morrows just all in a line, the first of ’em the biggest and clearest, the others getting smaller and smaller as they stand farther away; but they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they said, “I’m coming! Beware o’ me! Beware o’ me!” But you can raise up dreams with your music, and drive all such horrid fancies away!’

He was surprised to find this young woman—who though but a milkmaid had just that touch of rarity about her which might make her the envied of her housemates—shaping such sad imaginings. She was expressing in her own native phrases—assisted a little by her Sixth Standard training