after twelve to-night, as the distance is so long."

"Get up his strength!" said Tess impetuously, the tears welling to
her eyes. "O my God! Go to a public-house to get up his strength!
And you as well agreed as he, mother!"

Her rebuke and her mood seemed to fill the whole room, and to impart
a cowed look to the furniture, and candle, and children playing
about, and to her mother's face.

"No," said the latter touchily, "I be not agreed. I have been
waiting for 'ee to bide and keep house while I go fetch him."

"I'll go."

"O no, Tess. You see, it would be no use."

Tess did not expostulate. She knew what her mother's objection
meant. Mrs Durbeyfield's jacket and bonnet were already hanging
slily upon a chair by her side, in readiness for this contemplated
jaunt, the reason for which the matron deplored more than its
necessity.

"And take the _Compleat Fortune-Teller_ to the outhouse," Joan
continued, rapidly wiping her hands, and donning the garments.

The _Compleat Fortune-Teller_ was an old thick volume, which lay on a
table at her elbow, so worn by pocketing that the margins had reached
the edge of the type. Tess took it up, and her mother started.

This going to hunt up her shiftless husband at the inn was one of
Mrs Durbeyfield's still extant enjoyments in the muck and muddle of
rearing children. To discover him at Rolliver's, to sit there for
an hour or two by his side and dismiss all thought and care of the
children during the interval, made her happy. A sort of halo, an
occidental glow, came over life then. Troubles and other realities
took on themselves a metaphysical impalpability, sinking to mere
mental phenomena for serene contemplation, and no longer stood as
pressing concretions which chafed body and soul. The youngsters,
not immediately within sight, seemed rather bright and desirable
appurtenances than otherwise; the incidents of daily life were not
without humorousness and jollity in their aspect there. She felt a
little as she had used to feel when she sat by her now wedded husband
in the same spot during his wooing, shutting her eyes to his defects
of character, and regarding him only in his ideal presentation as
lover.

Tess, being left alone with the younger children, went first to the
outhouse with the fortune-telling book, and stuffed it into the
thatch. A curious fetishistic fear of this grimy volume on the part
of her mother prevented her ever allowing it to stay in