The majority of dairymen have a cross manner at milking time, but it happened that Mr Crick was glad to get a new hand--for the days were busy ones now--and he received her warmly; inquiring for her mother and the rest of the family--(though this as a matter of form merely, for in reality he had not been aware of Mrs Durbeyfield's existence till apprised of the fact by a brief business-letter about Tess).
She drank a little milk as temporary refreshment-- to the surprise--indeed, slight contempt--of Dairyman Crick, to whose mind it had apparently never occurred that milk was good as a beverage.
There were nearly a hundred milchers under Crick's management, all told; and of the herd the master-dairyman milked six or eight with his own hands, unless away from home.
"Well, as to going up into their horns," replied Dairyman Crick dubiously, as though even witchcraft might be limited by anatomical possibilities, "I couldn't say; I certainly could not.
When the milking was finished for the evening they straggled indoors, where Mrs Crick, the dairyman's wife--who was too respectable to go out milking herself, and wore a hot stuff gown in warm weather because the dairymaids wore prints--was giving an eye to the leads and things.
Jim warn't on his island, so I tramped off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows, red-hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful country.
Jack's been heah; he say he reck'n you's ben shot, kase you didn' come home no mo'; so I's jes' dis minute a startin' de raf' down towards de mouf er de crick, so's to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as Jack comes agin en tells me for certain you IS dead.
A sort of
crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two remaining horns; yes, two of them, one for Queequeg, and one for me.
A more complete imagination than Philip's might have pictured a youth of splendid hope, for he must have been entering upon manhood in 1848 when kings, remembering their brother of France, went about with an uneasy
crick in their necks; and perhaps that passion for liberty which passed through Europe, sweeping before it what of absolutism and tyranny had reared its head during the reaction from the revolution of 1789, filled no breast with a hotter fire.
If this were one of those realistic Zolaesque stories I would describe the
crick in the back that--but let us hurry on.
In short, they were very often in his ears, and very often in his thoughts, but always in his good opinion; and he very often got such a
crick in his neck by staring with his mouth wide open, at the steeple where they hung, that he was fain to take an extra trot or two, afterwards, to cure it.
I did get wet coming hither, and am sadly afraid that should I wade the water again I might get certain
cricks and pains i' the joints that would mar my devotions for many a day to come.