The movements of the other women were more or less similar to Tess’s, the whole bevy of them drawing together like dancers in a quadrille at the completion of a sheaf by each, every one placing her sheaf on end against those of the rest, till a shock, or “stitch” as it was here called, of ten or a dozen was formed.

They went to breakfast, and came again, and the work proceeded as before.  As the hour of eleven drew near a person watching her might have noticed that every now and then Tess’s glance flitted wistfully to the brow of the hill, though she did not pause in her sheafing.  On the verge of the hour the heads of a group of children, of ages ranging from six to fourteen, rose over the stubbly convexity of the hill.

The face of Tess flushed slightly, but still she did not pause.

The eldest of the comers, a girl who wore a triangular shawl, its corner draggling on the stubble, carried in her arms what at first sight seemed to be a doll, but proved to be an infant in long clothes.  Another brought some lunch.  The harvesters ceased working, took their provisions, and sat down against one of the shocks.  Here they fell to, the men plying a stone jar freely, and passing round a cup.

Tess Durbeyfield had been one of the last to suspend her labours.  She sat down at the end of the shock, her face turned somewhat away from her companions.  When she had deposited herself a man in a rabbit-skin cap, and with a red handkerchief tucked into his belt, held the cup of ale over the top of the shock for her to drink.  But she did not accept his offer.  As soon as her lunch was spread she called up the big girl, her sister, and took the baby of her, who, glad to be relieved of the burden, went away to the next shock and joined the other children playing there.  Tess, with a curiously stealthy yet courageous movement, and with a still rising colour, unfastened her frock and began suckling the child.

The men who sat nearest considerately turned their faces towards the other end of the field, some of them beginning to smoke; one, with absent-minded fondness, regretfully stroking the jar that would no longer yield a stream.  All the women but Tess fell into animated talk, and adjusted the disarranged knots of their hair.

When the infant had taken its fill, the young mother sat it upright in her lap, and looking into the far distance, dandled it with a gloomy indifference that was almost dislike; then all of a sudden she fell to violently kissing it some dozens of times, as if she could never leave off, the child crying at the vehemence of an onset which strangely combined passionateness with contempt.

“She’s fond of that there child, though she mid pretend to hate en, and say she wishes the baby and her too were in the churchyard,” observed the woman in the red petticoat.

“She’ll soon leave off saying that,” replied the one in buff.  “Lord, ‘tis wonderful what a body can get used to o’ that sort in time!”