When she came in her mother
pursued her advantage.
"Well, what be you going to do?" she asked.
"I wish I had seen Mrs d'Urberville," said Tess.
"I think you mid as well settle it. Then you'll see her soon
enough."
Her father coughed in his chair.
"I don't know what to say!" answered the girl restlessly. "It is for
you to decide. I killed the old horse, and I suppose I ought to do
something to get ye a new one. But--but--I don't quite like Mr
d'Urberville being there!"
The children, who had made use of this idea of Tess being taken up by
their wealthy kinsfolk (which they imagined the other family to be)
as a species of dolorifuge after the death of the horse, began to cry
at Tess's reluctance, and teased and reproached her for hesitating.
"Tess won't go-o-o and be made a la-a-dy of!--no, she says she
wo-o-on't!" they wailed, with square mouths. "And we shan't have a
nice new horse, and lots o' golden money to buy fairlings! And Tess
won't look pretty in her best cloze no mo-o-ore!"
Her mother chimed in to the same tune: a certain way she had of
making her labours in the house seem heavier than they were by
prolonging them indefinitely, also weighed in the argument.
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