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 daughter the while. Even now, when burdened with a young family, Joan Durbeyfield was a passionate lover of tune. No ditty floated into Blackmoor Vale from the outer world but Tess’s mother caught up its notation in a week.

There still faintly beamed from the woman’s features something of the freshness, and even the prettiness, of her youth; rendering it evident that the personal charms which Tess could boast of were in main part her mother’s gift, and therefore unknightly, unhistorical.

‘I’ll rock the cradle for ’ee, mother,’ said the daughter gently. ‘Or I’ll take off my best frock and help you wring up? I thought you had finished long ago.’

Her mother bore Tess no ill-will for leaving the housework to her single-handed efforts for so long; indeed, she seldom upbraided her thereon at any time, feeling but slightly the lack of Tess’s assistance whilst her chief plan for relieving herself of her diurnal labours lay in postponing them. To-night, however, she was even in a blither mood than usual. There was a dreaminess, a preoccupation, an exaltation, in the maternal look which the girl could not understand.