I knowed the man well."
"Oh yes; I have no doubt of it," said the person behind the dun cow.
Tess's attention was thus attracted to the dairyman's interlocutor,
of whom she could see but the merest patch, owing to his burying his
head so persistently in the flank of the milcher. She could not
understand why he should be addressed as "sir" even by the dairyman
himself. But no explanation was discernible; he remained under the
cow long enough to have milked three, uttering a private ejaculation
now and then, as if he could not get on.
"Take it gentle, sir; take it gentle," said the dairyman. "'Tis
knack, not strength, that does it."
"So I find," said the other, standing up at last and stretching his
arms. "I think I have finished her, however, though she made my
fingers ache."
Tess could then see him at full length. He wore the ordinary white
pinner and leather leggings of a dairy-farmer when milking, and his
boots were clogged with the mulch of the yard; but this was all his
local livery. Beneath it was something educated, reserved, subtle,
sad, differing.
But the details of his aspect were temporarily thrust aside by
the discovery that he was one whom she had seen before.
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