feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_3_part_7.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xxii
feat_summary_id: chapter xxii
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter XXII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase3-chapter16-24", "summary": "The Cricks receive a letter from a customer complaining about a foul taste in the butter, a \"twang,\" as he calls it. Mr. Crick determines that some of the cows wandered outside the fence and ate wild garlic. The workers attempt to find the culprit weed. Tess praises the other milkmaids to Angel, particularly Izz and Retty, but Angel loves Tess. All the milkmaids toss and turn in romantic dreams of Angel Clare", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  
  They came downstairs yawning next morning; but skimming and milking
  were proceeded with as usual, and they went indoors to breakfast.
  Dairyman Crick was discovered stamping about the house.  He had
  received a letter, in which a customer had complained that the butter
  had a twang.
  
  "And begad, so 't have!" said the dairyman, who held in his left hand
  a wooden slice on which a lump of butter was stuck. "Yes--taste for
  yourself!"
  
  Several of them gathered round him; and Mr Clare tasted, Tess tasted,
  also the other indoor milkmaids, one or two of the milking-men, and
  last of all Mrs Crick, who came out from the waiting breakfast-table.
  There certainly was a twang.
  
  The dairyman, who had thrown himself into abstraction to better
  realize the taste, and so divine the particular species of noxious
  weed to which it appertained, suddenly exclaimed--
  
  "'Tis garlic! and I thought there wasn't a blade left in that mead!"
  
  Then all the old hands remembered that a certain dry mead, into which
  a few of the cows had been admitted of late, had, in years gone by,
  spoilt the butter in the same way.  The dairyman had not recognized
  the taste at that time, and thought the butter bewitched.
  
  "We must overhaul that mead," he resumed; "this mustn't continny!"
  
  All having armed themselves with old pointed knives, they went out
  together.  As the inimical plant could only be present in very
  microscopic dimensions to have escaped ordinary observation, to
  find it seemed rather a hopeless attempt in the stretch of rich
  grass before them.  However, they formed themselves into line, all
  assisting, owing to the importance of the search; the dairyman at
  the upper end with Mr Clare, who had volunteered to help; then
  Tess, Marian, Izz Huett, and Retty; then Bill Lewell, Jonathan, and
  the married dairywomen--Beck Knibbs, with her wooly black hair and
  rolling eyes; and flaxen Frances, consumptive from the winter damps
  of the water-meads--who lived in their respective cottages.
  
  With eyes fixed upon the ground they crept slowly across a strip of
  the field, returning a little further down in such a manner that,
  when they should have finished, not a single inch of the pasture but
  would have fallen under the eye of some one of them.  It was a most
  tedious business, not more than half a dozen shoots of garlic being
  discoverable in the whole field; yet such was the herb's pungency
  that probably one bite of it by one cow had been sufficient to season
  the whole dairy's produce for the day.
  
  Differing one from another in natures and moods so greatly as they
  did, they yet formed, bending, a curiously uniform row--automatic,
  noiseless; and an alien observer passing down the neighbouring lane
  might well have been excused for massing them as "Hodge".  As they
  crept along, stooping low to discern the plant, a soft yellow gleam
  was reflected from the buttercups into their shaded faces, giving
  them an elfish, moonlit aspect, though the sun was pouring upon their
  backs in all the strength of noon.
  
  Angel Clare, who communistically stuck to his rule of taking part
  with the rest in everything, glanced up now and then.  It was not,
  of course, by accident that he walked next to Tess.
  
  "Well, how are you?" he murmured.
  
  "Very well, thank you, sir," she replied demurely.
  
  As they had been discussing a score of personal matters only
  half-an-hour before, the introductory style seemed a little
  superfluous.  But they got no further in speech just then.  They
  crept and crept, the hem of her petticoat just touching his gaiter,
  and his elbow sometimes brushing hers.  At last the dairyman, who
  came next, could stand it no longer.
  
  "Upon my soul and body, this here stooping do fairly make my back
  open and shut!" he exclaimed, straightening himself slowly with an
  excruciated look till quite upright.  "And you, maidy Tess, you
  wasn't well a day or two ago--this will make your head ache finely!
  Don't do any more, if you feel fainty; leave the rest to finish it."
  
  Dairyman Crick withdrew, and Tess dropped behind.  Mr Clare also
  stepped out of line, and began privateering about for the weed.  When
  she found him near her, her very tension at what she had heard the
  night before made her the first to speak.
  
  "Don't they look pretty?" she said.
  
  "Who?"
  
  "Izzy Huett and Retty."
  
  Tess had moodily decided that either of these maidens would make a
  good farmer's wife, and that she ought to recommend them, and obscure
  her own wretched charms.
  
  "Pretty?  Well, yes--they are pretty girls--fresh looking.  I have
  often thought so."
  
  "Though, poor dears, prettiness won't last long!"
  
  "O no, unfortunately."
  
  "They are excellent dairywomen."
  
  "Yes: though not better than you."
  
  "They skim better than I."
  
  "Do they?"
  
  Clare remained observing them--not without their observing him.
  
  "She is colouring up," continued Tess heroically.
  
  "Who?"
  
  "Retty Priddle."
  
  "Oh!  Why it that?"
  
  "Because you are looking at her."
  
  Self-sacrificing as her mood might be, Tess could not well go further
  and cry, "Marry one of them, if you really do want a dairywoman and
  not a lady; and don't think of marrying me!"  She followed Dairyman
  Crick, and had the mournful satisfaction of seeing that Clare
  remained behind.
  
  From this day she forced herself to take pains to avoid him--never
  allowing herself, as formerly, to remain long in his company, even if
  their juxtaposition were purely accidental.  She gave the other three
  every chance.
  
  Tess was woman enough to realize from their avowals to herself that
  Angel Clare had the honour of all the dairymaids in his keeping, and
  her perception of his care to avoid compromising the happiness of
  either in the least degree bred a tender respect in Tess for what she
  deemed, rightly or wrongly, the self-controlling sense of duty shown
  by him, a quality which she had never expected to find in one of the
  opposite sex, and in the absence of which more than one of the simple
  hearts who were his house-mates might have gone weeping on her
  pilgrimage.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter XXII
target: The Cricks receive a letter from a customer complaining about a foul taste in the butter, a "twang," as he calls it. Mr. Crick determines that some of the cows wandered outside the fence and ate wild garlic. The workers attempt to find the culprit weed. Tess praises the other milkmaids to Angel, particularly Izz and Retty, but Angel loves Tess. All the milkmaids toss and turn in romantic dreams of Angel Clare