A Sea Upcast by Thomas A. Janvier — Read

Whatever part of the world Tess came from, it was plain enough by the look of her -- and more and more plain as she grew up into a tall and lanky girl, and then into a tall slim woman -- that Suffolk was a long way off from the land where she was born.

Our Suffolk folk, for the most part, are shortish and thickset and fair and blue eyed. We men -- being whipped about by the wind and weather, and the sea-salt tanned into us -- lose our fairness early and go a bun-brown; but our women -- having no salt spray in their faces, and only their just allowance of sunshine -- have their blue eyes matched with the red and white cheeks that they were born with; and their hair, though sometimes it goes darkish, usually is a bright chestnut or a bright brown. Also, our women are steady-going and sensible; though I must say that now and then they are a bit hard to get along with: being given to doing their thinking slowly, and to being mighty fast set in their own notions when once they have made their minds up -- the same as we men. As for Tess -- with her black eyes and her black hair, and her face all a cream white with not a touch of red in it -- she was like none of them; and she could think more out-of-the-way things and be more sorts of a girl in five minutes than any Suffolk lass that ever I came across could think or be in a whole year!