"I'm glad of that. Will it do us any good, mother?"

"O yes! 'Tis thoughted that great things may come o't. No doubt a
mampus of volk of our own rank will be down here in their carriages
as soon as 'tis known. Your father learnt it on his way hwome
from Shaston, and he has been telling me the whole pedigree of the
matter."

"Where is father now?" asked Tess suddenly.

Her mother gave irrelevant information by way of answer: "He called
to see the doctor to-day in Shaston. It is not consumption at all,
it seems. It is fat round his heart, 'a says. There, it is like
this." Joan Durbeyfield, as she spoke, curved a sodden thumb
and forefinger to the shape of the letter C, and used the other
forefinger as a pointer. "'At the present moment,' he says to your
father, 'your heart is enclosed all round there, and all round
there; this space is still open,' 'a says. 'As soon as it do
meet, so,'"--Mrs Durbeyfield closed her fingers into a circle
complete--"'off you will go like a shadder, Mr Durbeyfield,' 'a says.
'You mid last ten years; you mid go off in ten months, or ten days.'"

Tess looked alarmed. Her father possibly to go behind the eternal
cloud so soon, notwithstanding this sudden greatness!

"But where IS father?" she asked again.

Her mother put on a deprecating look. "Now don't you be bursting out
angry! The poor man--he felt so rafted after his uplifting by the
pa'son's news--that he went up to Rolliver's half an hour ago. He do