`'Tis no use for you to be in love with him any more than me, Retty Priddle,' said jolly-faced Marian, the eldest, silly. `His thoughts be of other cheeks than thine!'
Retty Priddle still looked, and the others looked again.
`There he is again!' cried Izz Huett, the pale girl with dark damp hair and keenly cut lips.
`You needn't say anything, Izz,' answered Retty. `For I zid you kissing his shade.'
`What did you see her doing?' asked Marian.
`Why - he was standing over the whey-tub to let off the whey, and the shade of his face came upon the wall behind, close to Izz, who was standing there filling a vat. She put her mouth against the wall and kissed the shade of his mouth; I zid her, though he didn't.'
`O Izz Huett!' said Marian.
A rosy spot came into the middle of Izz Huett's cheek.
`Well, there was no harm in it,' she declared, with attempted coolness. `And if I be in love wi'en, so is Retty, too; and so be you, Marian, come to that.'
Marian's full face could not blush past its chronic pinkness.
`I!' she said. `What a tale! Ah, there he is again! Dear eyes - dear face - dear Mr Clare!'
`There - you've owned it!'
`So have you - so have we all,' said Marian, with the dry frankness of complete indifference to opinion. `It is silly to pretend otherwise amongst ourselves, though we need not own it to other folks. I would just marry 'n to-morrow!'
`So would I - and more,' murmured Izz Huett.
`And I too,' whispered the more timid Retty.
The listener grew warm.
`We can't all marry him,' said Izz.
`We shan't, either of us; which is worse still,' said the eldest. `There he is again!'
They all three blew him a silent kiss.
`Why?' asked Retty quickly.
`Because he likes Tess Durbeyfield best,' said Marian, lowering her voice. `I have watched him every day, and have found it out.'
There was a reflective silence.
`But she don't care anything for 'n?' at length breathed Retty.
`Well - I sometimes think that too.'