had seemed not to care
for "The Tailor's Breeches" and "Such a beauty I did grow", excellent
ditties as they were.

To perfect the ballads was now her whimsical desire. She practised
them privately at odd moments, especially "The break o' the day":

Arise, arise, arise!
And pick your love a posy,
All o' the sweetest flowers
That in the garden grow.
The turtle doves and sma' birds
In every bough a-building,
So early in the May-time
At the break o' the day!

It would have melted the heart of a stone to hear her singing these
ditties whenever she worked apart from the rest of the girls in this
cold dry time; the tears running down her cheeks all the while at the
thought that perhaps he would not, after all, come to hear her, and
the simple silly words of the songs resounding in painful mockery of
the aching heart of the singer.

Tess was so wrapt up in this fanciful dream that she seemed not to
know how the season was advancing; that the days had lengthened, that
Lady-Day was at hand, and would soon be followed by Old Lady-Day, the
end of her term here.

But before the quarter-day had quite come, something happened which
made Tess think of far different matters. She was at her lodging as
usual one evening, sitting in the downstairs room with the rest of
the family, when somebody knocked at the door and inquired for Tess.
Through the doorway she saw against the declining light a figure
with the height of a woman and the breadth of a child, a tall, thin,
girlish creature whom she did not recognize in the twilight till the
girl said "Tess!"

"What--is it 'Liza-Lu?" asked Tess, in startled accents. Her sister,
whom a little over a year ago she had left at home as a child, had
sprung up by a sudden shoot to a form of this presentation, of which
as yet Lu seemed herself scarce able to understand the meaning.
Her thin legs, visible below her once-long frock, now short by her
growing, and her uncomfortable hands and arms revealed her youth and
inexperience.

"Yes, I have been traipsing about all day, Tess," said Lu, with
unemotional gravity, "a-trying to find 'ee; and I'm very tired."

"What is the matter at home?"

"Mother is took very bad, and the doctor says she's dying, and as
father is not very well neither, and says 'tis wrong for a man of
such a high family as his to slave and drave at common labouring
work, we don't know what to do."

Tess stood in reverie a long time before