they formed an impish multitude now.

At Nuttlebury she passed the village inn, whose sign creaked in
response to the greeting of her footsteps, which not a human soul
heard but herself. Under the thatched roofs her mind's eye beheld
relaxed tendons and flaccid muscles, spread out in the darkness
beneath coverlets made of little purple patchwork squares, and
undergoing a bracing process at the hands of sleep for renewed labour
on the morrow, as soon as a hint of pink nebulosity appeared on
Hambledon Hill.

At three she turned the last corner of the maze of lanes she had
threaded, and entered Marlott, passing the field in which as a
club-girl she had first seen Angel Clare, when he had not danced
with her; the sense of disappointment remained with her yet. In the
direction of her mother's house she saw a light. It came from the
bedroom window, and a branch waved in front of it and made it wink at
her. As soon as she could discern the outline of the house--newly
thatched with her money--it had all its old effect upon Tess's
imagination. Part of her body and life it ever seemed to be; the
slope of its dormers, the finish of its gables, the broken courses of
brick which topped the chimney, all had something in common with her
personal character. A stupefaction had come into these features, to
her regard; it meant the illness of her mother.

She opened the door so softly as to disturb nobody; the lower room
was vacant, but the neighbour who was sitting up with her mother came
to the top of the stairs, and whispered that Mrs Durbeyfield was no
better, though she was sleeping just then. Tess prepared herself a
breakfast, and then took her place as nurse in her mother's chamber.

In the morning, when she contemplated the children, they had all a
curiously elongated look; although she had been away little more than
a year, their growth was astounding; and the necessity of applying
herself heart and soul to their needs took her out of her own cares.

Her father's ill-health was the same indefinite kind, and he sat in
his chair as usual. But the day after her arrival he was unusually
bright. He had a rational scheme for living, and Tess asked him what
it was.

"I'm thinking of sending round to all the old antiqueerians in this
part of England," he said, "asking them to subscribe to a fund to
maintain me. I'm sure they'd see it as a romantical, artistical,
and proper thing to do. They spend lots o' money in keepi