As for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily dislodge the incident from her consideration.
So matters stood when Tess opened the door, and paused upon the mat within it surveying the scene.
There stood her mother amid the group of children, as Tess had left her, hanging over the Monday washing-tub, which had now, as always, lingered on to the end of the week.
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 probable that the personal charms which Tess could boast of were in main part her mother's gift, and therefore unknightly, unhistorical.
Her mother bore Tess no ill-will for leaving the housework to her single-handed efforts for so long; indeed, Joan seldom upbraided her thereon at any time, feeling but slightly the lack of Tess's assistance whilst her instinctive plan for relieving herself of her labours lay in postponing them.
"Get up his strength!" said Tess impetuously, the tears welling to her eyes.
Tess, being left alone with the younger children, went first to the outhouse with the fortune-telling book, and stuffed it into the thatch.
Returning along the garden path Tess mused on what the mother could have wished to ascertain from the book on this particular day.
Tess looked out of the door, and took a mental journey through Marlott.
Tess began to perceive that a man in indifferent health, who proposed to start on a journey before one in the morning, ought not to be at an inn at this late hour celebrating his ancient blood.
'Liza-Lu then went to bed, and Tess, locking them all in, started on her way up the dark and crooked lane or street not made for hasty progress; a street laid out before inches of land had value, and when one-handed clocks sufficiently subdivided the day.