lead my present life paused but you be a gentleman s wife and it seems hardly fair that you live like this o yes it is quite fair though i am very well well he married you � and you can be unhappy wives are unhappy sometimes from no fault of their husbands � from their own you ve no faults that i m sure of and he s none so it must be something outside ye both dear will you do me a good turn without asking questions my husband has gone abroad and i have my allowance so that i have to fall back upon my old work for a time do not call me mrs but as before do they want a hand here o yes they ll take one always because few care to come tis a starve acre place com and are all they grow though i be here i feel tis a pity for such as you to come the woman pays � but you used to be as good a as yes but i ve got out o that since i took to drink lord that s the only comfort i ve got now if you engage you ll be set that s what i be doing but you won t like it � � anything will you speak for me you will do better by speaking for yourself very well now remember � nothing about him if i get the place i don t wish to bring his name down to the dirt who was really a girl though of grain than promised anything die asked this is pay night she said and if you were to come with me you would know at once i be real sorry that you are not happy but tis because he s away i know you couldn t be unhappy if he were here even if he d ye no money � even if he used you like a that s true i could not they walked on together and soon reached the which was almost sublime in its there was not a tree within sight there was not at this season a green pasture � nothing but and everywhere in large fields divided by hedges to waited outside the door of the till the group of work folk had received their wages and then introduced her the farmer himself it appeared was not at home but his wife who represented him this evening made no objection to on her agreeing to remain till old lady day female field labour was seldom offered now and its made it profitable for tasks which women could perform as readily as men having signed the agreement there was nothing more for to do at present than to get a lodging and she found one in the house at whose wall she had warmed herself it was a poor of the d that she had but it afford a shelter for the winter at any rate that night she wrote to inform her parents of her new address in case a letter should arrive at from her husband but she did not tell them of the of her situation it might have brought reproach upon him there was no exaggeration in s definition of ash farm as a starve acre place the single fat thing on the soil was herself and she was an of the three classes of village the village cared for by its lord the village cared for by itself and the village for either by itself or by its lord in other words the village of a resident squire s the village of free or copy and the owner s village with the land this place ash was the third but set to work patience that of moral courage with physical timidity was now no longer a minor feature in mrs and it sustained her the field in which she and her companion were set was a stretch of a odd acres in one patch on the highest ground of the farm rising above stony or � the of veins in the chalk formation composed of of loose white in and shapes the upper half of had been eaten off by the live stock and it was the business of the two women to up the lower or half of the root with a fork called a that it might be eaten also every leaf of the vegetable having already been consumed the whole field was in colour a desolate it was a complexion without features as if a face from chin to brow should be only an expanse of skin the sky wore in another colour the same likeness a white of countenance with the gone so these two upper and op the d confronted each other all day long the white face looking down on the brown face and the brown face looking up at the white face without anything standing between them but the two girls crawling over the surface of the former like flies nobody came near them and their movements showed a mechanical regularity their forms standing in � brown tied behind to the bottom to keep their gowns from blowing about � scant revealing boots that reached high up the ankles and yellow gloves with the pensive character the hood lent to their bent heads would have reminded the observer of some early italian conception of the two they worked on hour after hour of the forlorn aspect they bore in the landscape not thinking of the justice or injustice of their lot even in such a position as theirs it was possible to exist in a dream in the afternoon the rain came on again and said that they need not work any more but if they did not work they would not be paid so they worked on it was so high a situation this field that 