“I’d rather try to get work,” she murmured.

“Durbeyfield, you can settle it,” said his wife, turning to where he sat in the background.  “If you say she ought to go, she will go.”

“I don’t like my children going and making themselves beholden to strange kin,” murmured he.  “I’m the head of the noblest branch o’ the family, and I ought to live up to it.”

His reasons for staying away were worse to Tess than her own objections to going.  “Well, as I killed the horse, mother,” she said mournfully, “I suppose I ought to do something.  I don’t mind going and seeing her, but you must leave it to me about asking for help.  And don’t go thinking about her making a match for me—­it is silly.”

“Very well said, Tess!” observed her father sententiously.

“Who said I had such a thought?” asked Joan.

“I fancy it is in your mind, mother.  But I’ll go.”

Rising early next day she walked to the hill-town called Shaston, and there took advantage of a van which twice in the week ran from Shaston eastward to Chaseborough, passing near Trantridge, the parish in which the vague and mysterious Mrs d’Urberville had her residence.

Tess Durbeyfield’s route on this memorable morning lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the Vale in which she had been born, and in which her life had unfolded.  The Vale of Blackmoor was to her the world, and its inhabitants the races thereof.  From the gates and stiles of Marlott she had looked down its length in the wondering days of infancy, and what had been mystery to her then was not much less than mystery to her now.  She had seen daily from her chamber-window towers, villages, faint white mansions; above all, the town of Shaston standing majestically on its height; its windows shining like lamps in the evening sun.  She had hardly ever visited the place, only a small tract even of the Vale and its environs being known to her by close inspection.  Much less had she been far outside the valley.  Every contour of the surrounding hills was as personal to her as that of her relatives’ faces; but for what lay beyond, her judgment was dependent on the teaching of the village school, where she had held a leading place at the time of her leaving, a year or two before this date.

In those early days she had been much loved by others of her own sex and age, and had used to be seen about the village as one of three—­all nearly of the same year—­walking home from school side by side; Tess the middle one—­in a pink print pinafore, of a finely reticulated pattern, worn over a stuff frock that had lost its original colour for a nondescript tertiary—­marching on upon long stalky legs, in tight stockings which had little ladder-like holes at the knees, torn by kneeling in the roads and banks in search of vegetable and mineral treasures; her then earth-coloured hair hanging like pot-hooks; the arms of the two outside girls resting round the waist of Tess; her arms on the shoulders of the two supporters.