XXI
There was a great stir in the milk-house just after breakfast. The
churn revolved as usual, but the butter would not come. Whenever
this happened the dairy was paralyzed. Squish, squash echoed the
milk in the great cylinder, but never arose the sound they waited
for.
Dairyman Crick and his wife, the milkmaids Tess, Marian, Retty
Priddle, Izz Huett, and the married ones from the cottages; also
Mr Clare, Jonathan Kail, old Deborah, and the rest, stood gazing
hopelessly at the churn; and the boy who kept the horse going outside
put on moon-like eyes to show his sense of the situation. Even the
melancholy horse himself seemed to look in at the window in inquiring
despair at each walk round.
"'Tis years since I went to Conjuror Trendle's son in Egdon--years!"
said the dairyman bitterly. "And he was nothing to what his father
had been. I have said fifty times, if I have said once, that I DON'T
believe in en; though 'a do cast folks' waters very true. But I
shall have to go to 'n if he's alive. O yes, I shall have to go to
'n, if this sort of thing continnys!"
Even Mr Clare began to feel tragical at the dairyman's desperation.
"Conjuror Fall, t'other side of Casterbridge, that they used to call
'Wide-O', was a very good man when I was a boy," said Jonathan Kail.
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