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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 noxious2 weed to which it appertained, suddenly exclaimed--
`'Tis garlic! and I thought there wasn't a blade left in that mead3!'
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 overhaul4 that mead,' he resumed; `this mustn't continny!'
All having armed themselves with old pointed5 knives they went out together. As the inimical plant could only be present in very microscopic6 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 woolly 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 fixed7 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
1 hem | |
n.贴边,镶边;vt.缝贴边;(in)包围,限制 | |
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2 noxious | |
adj.有害的,有毒的;使道德败坏的,讨厌的 | |
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3 mead | |
n.蜂蜜酒 | |
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4 overhaul | |
v./n.大修,仔细检查 | |
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5 pointed | |
adj.尖的,直截了当的 | |
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6 microscopic | |
adj.微小的,细微的,极小的,显微的 | |
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7 fixed | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
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8 pungency | |
n.(气味等的)刺激性;辣;(言语等的)辛辣;尖刻 | |
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9 curiously | |
adv.有求知欲地;好问地;奇特地 | |
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10 demurely | |
adv.装成端庄地,认真地 | |
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11 superfluous | |
adj.过多的,过剩的,多余的 | |
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12 touching | |
adj.动人的,使人感伤的 | |
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13 moodily | |
adv.喜怒无常地;情绪多变地;心情不稳地;易生气地 | |
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14 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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15 maidens | |
处女( maiden的名词复数 ); 少女; 未婚女子; (板球运动)未得分的一轮投球 | |
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16 formerly | |
adv.从前,以前 | |
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17 juxtaposition | |
n.毗邻,并置,并列 | |
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18 purely | |
adv.纯粹地,完全地 | |
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