Female field-labour was
seldom offered now, and its cheapness made it profitable for tasks
which women could perform as readily as men.
Having signed the agreement, there was nothing more for Tess to do
at present than to get a lodging, and she found one in the house at
whose gable-wall she had warmed herself. It was a poor subsistence
that she had ensured, but it would afford a shelter for the winter
at any rate.
That night she wrote to inform her parents of her new address, in
case a letter should arrive at Marlott from her husband. But she
did not tell them of the sorriness of her situation: it might have
brought reproach upon him.
XLIII
There was no exaggeration in Marian's definition of Flintcomb-Ash
farm as a starve-acre place. The single fat thing on the soil was
Marian herself; and she was an importation. Of the three classes of
village, the village cared for by its lord, the village cared for by
itself, and the village uncared for either by itself or by its lord
(in other words, the village of a resident squires's tenantry, the
village of free- or copy-holders, and the absentee-owner's village,
farmed with the land) this place, Flintcomb-Ash, was the third.
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