It was an eighty-cow dairy, and the troop of milkers, regular andsupernumerary, were all at work; for, though the time of year was as yetbut early April, the feed lay entirely in water-meadows, and the cowswere 'in full pail.' The hour was about six in the evening, and three-fourths of the large, red, rectangular animals having been finished off,there was opportunity for a little conversation.

'He do bring home his bride to-morrow, I hear. They've come as far asAnglebury to-day.'

The voice seemed to proceed from the belly of the cow called Cherry, butthe speaker was a milking-woman, whose face was buried in the flank ofthat motionless beast.

'Hav' anybody seen her?' said another.

There was a negative response from the first. 'Though they say she's arosy-cheeked, tisty-tosty little body enough,' she added; and as themilkmaid spoke she turned her face so that she could glance past hercow's tail to the other side of the barton, where a thin, fading woman ofthirty milked somewhat apart from the rest.

'Years younger than he, they say,' continued the second, with also aglance of reflectiveness in the same direction.

'How old do you call him, then?'

'Thirty or so.'

'More like forty,' broke in an old milkman near, in a long white pinaforeor 'wropper,' and with the brim of his hat tied down, so that he lookedlike a woman. ''A was born before our Great Weir was builded, and Ihadn't man's wages when I laved water there.'

The discussion waxed so warm that the purr of the milk-streams becamejerky, till a voice from another cow's belly cried with authority, 'Nowthen, what the Turk do it matter to us about Farmer Lodge's age, orFarmer Lodge's new mis'ess? I shall have to pay him nine pound a yearfor the rent of every one of these milchers, whatever his age or hers.Get on with your work, or 'twill be dark afore we have done. The eveningis pinking in a'ready.' This speaker was the dairyman himself; by whomthe milkmaids and men were employed.

Nothing more was said publicly about Farmer Lodge's wedding, but thefirst woman murmured under her cow to her next neighbour, ''Tis hard forshe,' signifying the thin worn milkmaid aforesaid.

'O no,' said the second. 'He ha'n't spoke to Rhoda Brook for years.'

When the milking was done they washed their pails and hung them on a many-forked stand made of the peeled limb of an oak-tree, set upright in theearth, and resembling a colossal antlered horn. The majority thendispersed in various directions homeward. The thin woman who had notspoken was joined by a boy of twelve or thereabout, and the twain wentaway up the field also.

Their course lay apart from that of the others, to a lonely spot highabove the water-meads, and not far from the border of Egdon Heath, whosedark countenance was visible in the distance as they drew nigh to theirhome.

'They've just been saying down in barton that your father brings hisyoung wife home from Anglebury to-morrow,' the woman observed. 'I shallwant to send you for a few things to market, and you'll be pretty sure tomeet 'em.'

'Yes, mother,' said the boy. 'Is father married then?'

'Yes . . . You can give her a look, and tell me what's she's like, if youdo see her.'

'Yes, mother.'

'If she's dark or fair, and if she's tall--as tall as I. And if sheseems like a woman who has ever worked for a living, or one that has beenalways well off, and has never done anything, and shows marks of the ladyon her, as I expect she do.'

'Yes.'

They crept up the hill in the twilight, and entered the cottage. It wasbuilt of mud-walls, the surface of which had been washed by many rainsinto channels and depressions that left none of the original flat facevisible; while here and there in the thatch above a rafter showed like abone protruding through the skin.

She was kneeling down in the chimney-corner, before two pieces of turflaid together with the heather inwards, blowing at the red-hot ashes withher breath till the turves flamed. The radiance lit her pale cheek, andmade her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew.'Yes,' she resumed, 'see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, noticeif her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had everdone housework, or are milker's hands like mine.'

The boy again promised, inattentively this time, his mother not observingthat he was cutting a notch with his pocket-knife in the beech-backedchair.