“Marian, dear Marian, will you do me a good turn without asking questions? My husband has gone abroad, and somehow I have overrun my allowance, so that I have to fall back upon my old work for a time. Do not call me Mrs Clare, but Tess, as before. Do they want a hand here?”
“O yes; they’ll take one always, because few care to come. ’Tis a starve-acre place. Corn and swedes are all they grow. Though I be here myself, I feel ’tis a pity for such as you to come.”
“But you used to be as good a dairywoman as I.”
“Yes; but I’ve got out o’ that since I took to drink. Lord, that’s the only comfort I’ve got now! If you engage, you’ll be set swede-hacking. That’s what I be doing; but you won’t like it.”
“O—anything! Will you speak for me?”
“You will do better by speaking for yourself.”
“Very well. Now, Marian, remember—nothing about him if I get the place. I don’t wish to bring his name down to the dirt.”
Marian, who was really a trustworthy girl though of coarser grain than Tess, promised anything she asked.
“This is pay-night,” she said, “and if you were to come with me you would know at once. I be real sorry that you are not happy; but ’tis because he’s away, I know. You couldn’t be unhappy if he were here, even if he gie’d ye no money—even if he used you like a drudge.”
“That’s true; I could not!”