 here be what they call
High. All his sons, except our Mr. Clare, be made pa'sons too.«
    Tess had not at this hour the curiosity to ask why the present Mr. Clare was
not made a parson like his brethren, and gradually fell asleep again, the words
of her informant coming to her along with the smell of the cheeses in the
adjoining cheese-loft, and the measured dripping of the whey from the wrings
downstairs.
 

                                     XVIII

Angel Clare rises out of the past not altogether as a distinct figure, but as an
appreciative voice, a long regard of fixed, abstracted eyes, and a mobility of
mouth somewhat too small and delicately lined for a man's, though with an
unexpectedly firm close of the lower lip now and then; enough to do away with
any inference of indecision. Nevertheless, something nebulous, preoccupied,
vague, in his bearing and regard, marked him as one who probably had no very
definite aim or concern about his material future. Yet as a lad people had said
of him that he was one who might do anything if he tried.
    He was the youngest son of his father, a poor parson at the other end of the
county, and had arrived at Talbothays Dairy as a six months' pupil, after going
the round of some other farms, his object being to acquire a practical skill in
the various processes of farming, with a view either to the Colonies, or the
tenure of a home-farm, as circumstances might decide.
    His entry into the ranks of the agriculturists and breeders was a step in
the young man's career which had been anticipated neither by himself nor by
others.
    Mr. Clare the elder, whose first wife had died and left him a daughter,
married a second late in life. This lady had somewhat unexpectedly brought him
three sons, so that between Angel, the youngest, and his father the vicar there
seemed to be almost a missing generation. Of these boys the aforesaid Angel, the
child of his old age, was the only son who had not taken a University degree,
though he was the single one of them whose early promise might have done full
justice to an academical training.
    Some two or three years before Angel's appearance at the Marlott dance, on a
day when he had left school and was pursuing his studies at home, a parcel came
to the vicarage from the local bookseller's, directed to the Reverend James
Clare. The vicar having opened it and found it to contain a book, read a few
pages; whereupon he jumped
