simultaneously for a moment, and an exclamation at highest vocal pitch would take the place of the melody.
‘God bless thy diment eyes! And thy waxen cheeks! And thy cherry mouth! And thy Cubit’s lags! And every bit o’ thy blessed body!'
After this invocation the rocking and the singing would recommence, and the ‘Spotted Cow’ proceed as before. So matters stood when Tess opened the door, and paused upon the mat within it surveying the scene.
The interior, in spite of the melody, struck upon the girl’s senses with an unspeakable dreariness. From the holiday gaieties of the day—the white gowns, the nosegays, the willow-wands, the whirling movements on the green, the flash of gentle sentiment towards the stranger—to the yellow melancholy of this one-candled spectacle, what a step! Besides the jar of contrast there came to her a chill self-reproach that she had not returned sooner, to help her mother in these domesticities, instead of indulging herself out-of-doors.
There stood her mother amid the group of children, as Tess had left her, hanging over the
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