‘Well, I’m glad you’ve come,’ her mother said, as soon as the last note had passed out of her. ‘I want to go and fetch your father; but what’s more’n that, I want to tell ’ee what have happened. You’ll be fess enough, my poppet, when th’st know!’ (Mrs. Durbeyfield still habitually spoke the dialect; her daughter, who had passed the Sixth Standard in the National School under a London-trained mistress, used it only when excited by joy, surprise, or grief.)
‘Since I’ve been away?’ Tess asked.
‘Ay!’
‘Had it anything to do with father’s making such a mommet of himself in the carriage this afternoon? Why did he? I felt inclined to sink into the ground with shame!’
‘That was all a part of the larry! We’ve been found to be the greatest gentlefolk in the whole county—reaching all back long before Oliver Grumble’s time—to the days of the Pagan Turks—with monuments, and vaults, and crests, and ’scutcheons, and the Lord knows what all. In Charles’s days we was made Knights o’ the Royal Oak, our real name being D’Urberville! … Don’t that make your bosom plim? ’Twas
32
