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 enough to buy a spy-glass so large that it would draw the stars as near to her as Nettlecombe-Tout?

The renewed subject, which seemed to have impregnated the whole family, filled Tess with impatience.

‘Never mind that now!’ she exclaimed.

‘Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?’

‘Yes.’

‘All like ours?’

‘I don’t know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound—a few blighted.’

‘Which do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?’

‘A blighted one.’

‘’Tis very unlucky that we didn’t pitch on a sound one, when there were so many more of ’em!’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it like that really, Tess?’ said Abraham, turning to her much impressed, on reconsideration of this rare information. ‘How would it have been if we had pitched on a sound one?’