blither mood than usual. There was a dreaminess, a pre-occupation,
an exaltation, in the maternal look which the girl could not
understand.

"Well, I'm glad you've come," her mother said, as soon as the last
note had passed out of her. "I want to go and fetch your father;
but what's more'n that, I want to tell 'ee what have happened. Y'll
be fess enough, my poppet, when th'st know!" (Mrs Durbeyfield
habitually spoke the dialect; her daughter, who had passed the Sixth
Standard in the National School under a London-trained mistress,
spoke two languages: the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary
English abroad and to persons of quality.)

"Since I've been away?" Tess asked.

"Ay!"

"Had it anything to do with father's making such a mommet of himself
in thik carriage this afternoon? Why did 'er? I felt inclined to
sink into the ground with shame!"

"That wer all a part of the larry! We've been found to be the
greatest gentlefolk in the whole county--reaching all back long
before Oliver Grumble's time--to the days of the Pagan Turks--with
monuments, and vaults, and crests, and 'scutcheons, and the Lord
knows what all. In Saint Charles's days we was made Knights o' the
Royal Oak, our real name being d'Urberville! ... Don't that make
your bosom plim? 'Twas on this account that your father rode home
in the vlee; not because he'd been drinking, as people supposed."