Like all village girls,
she was well grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and had dutifully
studied the histories of Aholah and Aholibah, and knew the inferences
to be drawn therefrom. But when the same question arose with regard
to the baby, it had a very different colour. Her darling was about
to die, and no salvation.
It was nearly bedtime, but she rushed downstairs and asked if she
might send for the parson. The moment happened to be one at which
her father's sense of the antique nobility of his family was highest,
and his sensitiveness to the smudge which Tess had set upon that
nobility most pronounced, for he had just returned from his weekly
booze at Rolliver's Inn. No parson should come inside his door, he
declared, prying into his affairs, just then, when, by her shame, it
had become more necessary than ever to hide them. He locked the door
and put the key in his pocket.
The household went to bed, and, distressed beyond measure, Tess
retired also. She was continually waking as she lay, and in the
middle of the night found that the baby was still worse. It was
obviously dying--quietly and painlessly, but none the less surely.
In her misery she rocked herself upon the bed.
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