Thomas HardyCHAPTER ONE
The milkmaid and the wife
It was six o'clock on a warm April evening, milking time for Farmer Lodge's eighty cows. They stood quietly in the dairy, and the milkmaids were all at work.
'They say Farmer Lodge is coming home with his new wife tomorrow,' said one milkmaid.
'Yes. And she's young and pretty, I hear,' a second girl said.
She looked past her cow to the other end of the dairy. There was another milkmaid there, a thin, older woman, about thirty years old.
The first girl looked at the older woman too. 'I'm sorry for her,' she said quietly to her friend.
'Oh no,' said the second girl. 'That was years and years ago. Farmer Lodge never speaks to Rhoda Brook these days.'
When the milking was finished, the milkmaids left the dairy and went home. The thin woman, Rhoda Brook, did not walk to the village with the other girls. She went up the hill behind the farm to a little house near the trees. It was a poor house, of only two rooms, and the roof did not keep the rain out.
At the door of the house, the woman met her son, a boy of about twelve, and they went inside.
'I heard something at the dairy today,' the woman said. 'Your father is bringing his young wife home tomorrow. I want you to go and look at her.'
'Yes, mother,' said the boy. 'Is father married then?'
'Yes... You can go into town and do my shopping for me. And when you see her, there or on the road, look at her carefully.'
'Yes, mother.'
'What is she like? I want to know. Is she tall, is she short? Are her eyes blue or brown or green? Look at the colour of her hair, the colour of her dress. And look at her hands. Does she have small white hands, or the hands of a milkmaid, a worker's hands? You must look at all these things, and tell me.'
'Yes, mother,' the boy said again. He took a piece of bread from the table and began to eat it.
His mother said nothing more, but turned her thin, pale face to the open door. Her beautiful dark eyes stared out at the trees, seeing and not seeing.
The next evening was warm and sunny. The road from the town to the farm went up and down a number of hills, and near the top of one big hill, the boy saw a carriage behind him. It was Farmer Lodge with his new wife. She was a pretty young thing, much younger than her husband, with a sweet, innocent face.