Page:Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891 Volume 2).pdf/26

 ‘Because he likes Tess Durbeyfield best,’ said Marian, lowering her voice. ‘I have watched him every day, and have found it out.’

There was a reflective silence.

‘But she don’t care anything for him?’ at length breathed Retty.

‘Well—I sometimes think that too.’

‘But how silly all this is!’ said Izz Huett impatiently, ‘Of course he won’t marry any one of us, or Tess either—a gentleman’s son, who’s going to be a great landowner and farmer abroad! More likely to ask us to come with him as farmhands at so much a year!’

One sighed, and another sighed, and Marian’s plump figure sighed biggest of all. Somebody in bed hard by sighed too. Tears came into the eyes of Retty Priddle, the pretty red-haired youngest—the last bud of the Paridelles, so important in the county annals. They watched silently a little longer, their three faces still close together as before, and the triple hues of their hair mingling. But the unconscious Mr. Clare had gone indoors, and they saw him no more; and, the shades beginning to deepen, they crept into their beds. In a few minutes they heard