 Chapter 18 of Adam Bede. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Misty, Guangzhou, China. Adam Bede by George Elliott. Chapter 18. Church. Heady! Heady! Don't you know church begins at two, and it's gone half after one already? Have you got nothing better to think on this good fun day, as poor old bias leaves to be put into the ground? He came grounded at the dead of the night, as it's enough to make one's background cold. But you must be dizzing in yourself as if there was a wedding instead of a funeral? Well, aunt said, Heady, I can't be ready so soon as everybody else when I've got totties things to put on, and I'd ever such work to make her stand still. Heady was coming downstairs, and Mrs. Poiser, in her plain bonnet and shawl, was standing below. If ever a girl looked as if she had been made of roses, that girl was Heady in her Sunday hat and frock. For her hat was trimmed with pink, and her frock had pink spots sprinkled on a white ground. There was nothing but pink and white about her except in her dark hair and eyes and her little buckled shoes. Mrs. Poiser was provoked at herself, for she could hardly keep from smiling, as any mortal is inclined to do at the sight of pretty round things. So she turned without speaking and joined a group outside the house door, followed by Heady, whose heart was fluttering so at the thought of someone she expected to see at church, that she hardly felt the ground she trod on. And now the little procession set off. Mr. Poiser was in his Sunday suit of drab, with a red and green waistcoat, and a green watch ribbon having a large cornelian seal attached, pendant like a plum line from that promontory where his watch pocket was situated. A silk handkerchief of a yellow tone round his neck, and excellent gray ribbed stocking, knitted by Mrs. Poiser's own hand, setting off the proportions of his leg. Mr. Poiser had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the growing abuse of top boots and other fashions tending to disguise the Netherlimbs had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy of the human calf. Still less had he reason to be ashamed of his round, jolly face, which was good humor itself, as he said, Come, Hetty, come, Little Ones, and giving his arm to his wife led the way through the Causeway Gate into the yard. The Little Ones addressed were Marty and Tommy, boys of nine and seven in little fustion-tailed coats and knee-breaches, relieved by rosy cheeks and black eyes, looking as much like their father as a very small elephant is like a very large one. Hetty walked between them, and behind came Patient Molly, whose task it was to carry Toddy through the yard and over all the wet places on the road. For Toddy, having speedily recovered from her threatened fever, had insisted on going to church today, and especially on wearing her red and black necklace outside her tippet. And there were many wet places for her to be carried over this afternoon, for there had been heavy showers in the morning, though now the clouds had rolled off and lay in towering silvery masses on the horizon. You might have known it was Sunday if you had only waked up in the farmyard. The cocks and hens seemed to know it and made only crooning subdued noises. The very bulldog looked less savage as if he would have been satisfied with a smaller bite than usual. The sunshine seemed to call all things to rest and not to labour. It was asleep itself, on the moss-grown cow shed, on the group of white ducks nestling together with their bills tucked under their wing. On the old black fowl stretched languidly on the straw while her largest young one found an excellent spring-bud on his mother's fat ribs. On Alec the Shepherd, in his new smock frock, became an uneasy siesta, half sitting, half standing on the greenery steps. Alec was of the opinion that church, like other luxuries, was not to be indulged in often by a foreman who had the weather and the use on his mind. Church? Nay, ungotten somatels to think on, was an answer which he often uttered in a tone of bitter significance that silenced further question. I feel sure Alec meant no irreverence. Indeed, I know that his mind was not of a speculative negative cast, and he would on no account have missed going to church on Christmas Day, Easter Day, and Wissentide, but he had a general impression that public worship and religious ceremonies, like other non-productive employment, were intended for people who had leisure. There's father astandon at the yard gate, said Martin Poiser. I reckon he wants to watch us down the field. It's wonderful what sight he has, and him turns seventy-five. I often think it's with the old folks as it is with the babies, said Mrs. Poiser. They're satisfied with looking, no matter what they're looking at. It's God Almighty's way of quietening, I reckon, before they go to sleep. Old Martin opened the gate as he saw the family procession approaching and held it wide open, leaning on his stick, pleased to do this bit of work. For like all old men whose life has been spent in labour, he liked to feel that he was still useful, that there was a better crop of onions in the garden because he was by at the sowing, and that the cows would be milked the better if he stayed at home on a Sunday afternoon to look on. He always went to church on sacrament Sundays, but not very regularly at other time. On wet Sundays, or whenever he had a touch of rheumatism, he used to read the three first chapters of Genesis instead. They'll have put in thigh speed of the ground before he get to the churchyard, he said, as the sun came up, it'd have been better luck if they'd heard it buried him in the forenoon when the rain was falling. There's no likelihoods of a drop now, and the moon lies like a boat there, just see. That's a sure sign of fair weather. There's a many as is false, but that's sure. I, I, said the sun, I'm in hopes it'll hold up now. Mind what the parson says, mind what the parson says, my love, said grandfather to the black-eyed youngsters in knee-bretches, conscious of a marble or two in their pockets which they looked forward to handling a little secretly during the sermon. Do it by Dan Dad, said Toddie, me done deterred, me dot my necklace on, did me a peppermint. Granddad, shaking with laughter at this deep little wench, slowly transferred his stick to his left hand, which held the gate open, and slowly thrust his finger into the waistcoat pocket on which Toddie had fixed her eyes with a confident look of expectation. And when they were all gone, the old man leaned on the gate again, watching them across the lane, along the home-clothes, and through the far gate, till they disappeared behind a bend in the hedge. For the hedgerows in those days shut out one's view, even on the better-managed farms. And this afternoon the dog roses were tossing out their pink wreaths, the nightshade was in its yellow and purple glory, the pale honeysuckle grew out of reach, peeping high up out of a holly bush, and overall an ash or a sycamore every now and then through its shadow across the path. There were acquaintances at other gates who had to move aside and let them pass. At the gate of the home-clothes there was half the dairy of cows standing one behind the other, extremely slow to understand that their large bodies might be in the way. At the far gate there was the mare holding her head over the bars, and beside her the liver-coloured foal with its head towards its mother's plank, apparently still much embarrassed by its own straddling existence. The way lay entirely through Mr. Poiser's own field, till they reached the main road leading to the village, and he turned a keen eye on the stalk and the crops as they went along, while Mrs. Poiser was ready to supply a running commentary on them all. The woman who manages the dairy has a large share in making the rent, so she may well be allowed to have her opinion on stock and their keep, an exercise which strengthens her understanding so much that she finds herself able to give her husband advice on most other subjects. There is that short-horned sally, she said, as they entered the home-clothes, and she caught sight of the meek beasts that lay chewing the cud and looking at her with a sleepy eye. I begin to hate the sight of the cow, and I say now what I said three weeks ago, the sooner we get rid of her the better, for there that little yellow cowess doesn't give half the milk, and yet I have twice as much butter from her. Why, they not like the women in general, said Mr. Poiser. They like the short horns, as give such a lot of milk. There's Chown's wife, once in Dubai, no other sort. What did Sinify what Chown's wife likes? A poor, soft thing, with no more headpiece nor a sparrow. She'd take a big cullander to strain her lard with, and then wander as the scratchens run through. I've seen enough of her to know as I'll never take a servant from her house again. All hugger mugger, and you'd never know when you went in whether it was Monday or Friday the wash dragging on to the end of the week, and as for her cheese, I know well enough it rose like a loaf in the tin last year, and then she talks of the weather being in the fault, as there's folks that stand on their heads and then say the fault was of their boots. Well, Chown's been wanted to buy Sally so we can get rid of her if they like. Said Mr. Poiser, secretly proud of his wife's superior power of putting two and two together. Indeed, on recent market days he had more than once boasted of her discernment in this very matter of short horn. I, then, must choose a soft for a wife, may as well buy up the short horn, for if you get your head stuck in a bog, your legs may as well go after it. Eh, took her legs, there's legs for you, Mrs. Poiser continued, as Toddy, who had been set down now the road was dry, toddled all in front of her father and mother. They are shapes, and she's got such a long foot she'll be her father's own child. I, she'll be welly such a one as heady at ten years' time, only she's got thy colored eyes. I never remember a blue eye in my family, my mother had eyes as black as slows, just like Hettys. The child would be none the worse for having some it as isn't like Hettys, and I'm none for having her so over pretty. Though for the matter of that there's people with light hair and blue eyes as pretty as them with black. If Diana had got a bit of color in her cheeks, and didn't stick that Methodist cap on her head enough to frighten the cows, folks would think her as pretty as Hettys. Nay, nay, said Mr. Poiser, with rather contemptuous emphasis. They just don't know the pints of a woman. The men had never run after Diana as they would after Hettys. What care I what the men had run after? It's well seen what choice the most of them know how to make by the poor draggled hails of wives you see, like bit to God's ribbon. Good for nothing when the color's gone. Well, well, they can still say about what I know how to make a choice when I marry thee, said Mr. Poiser, who usually settled little conjugal disputes by a compliment of this thought, and thee was twice as buxom as Diana ten year ago. I never said as the woman had need to be ugly to make a good missus of a house. There's town's wife ugly enough to turn the milk and save the rennet, but she'll never save nothing any other way. But as for Diana, poor child, she's never likely to be buxom as long as she'll make her dinner a cake and water, for the sake of giving to them is want. She provoked me past bearing some time, and as I told her she went clean again the scripture, for that says love your neighbor as yourself. But, I said, if you loved your neighbor no better nor you do yourself, Diana, it's little enough you'd do for him. You'd be thinking he might do well enough on a half empty stomach. Eh, I wonder where she is this blessed Sunday. Sitting by that sick woman, I daresay, as she'd set her heart on going to all of a sudden. Ah, it was a pity she should take such migrums into her head when she might have stayed with us all summer, and eaten twice as much as she wanted, and it had never had been missed. She made no odds in the house at all, for she sat as still at her so in as a bird on the nest, and was uncommon nimble at running to fetch anything. If Hetty gets married, it's like to have Diana with the constant. It's no use thinking of that, said Mrs. Poiser. You might as well beckon to the flying swallow as ask Diana to come and live here comfortable, like other folks. If anything could turn her, I should have turned her, for I'd talked to her for an hour on end. And scolded her too, for she's my own sister's child, and it behoves me to do what I can for her. But, ah, poor thing, as soon as she'd set us good-bye and got into the cart, and looked back at me with her pale face as as welly like her Aunt Judith come back from heaven, I began to be frightened to think of the set-downs I'd given her, for it comes over you sometimes, as if she'd away and know in the rights of things more nor other folks have. But I'll never give in as that's cause she's a Methodist, no more nor a white calf's white, in the same bucket with a blackened. Nay, said Mr. Poiser, with his near and approach to a snarl, as his good nature would allow. I'm no opinion of the Methodist. It's only trade's folks has turned Methodist, you never knew a pharma bitten with them, Meggots. There's maybe a workman now and then, as is an over-clever at's work, takes to preaching in that, like Seth Bede. But you see, Adam, as has got one of the best headpieces here about, knows better. He's a good churchman, else I'd never encourage him to beat heart for Heady. Why? Goodness me, said Mrs. Poiser, who had looked back while her husband was speaking. Look where Molly is with them lads. They're the fields' length behind us. How could you let him do so, Heady? Anybody might as well set a picture to watch the children as you. Run back and tell him to come on. Mr. and Mrs. Poiser were now at the end of the second field, so they set Toddy on top of one of the large stones, forming the true Loamshire style, and awaited the loiterers Toddy with complacency. Day naughty naughty boys, meet do it. The fact was that this Sunday walk through the fields was fraught with great excitement to Marty and Tommy, who saw a perpetual drama going on in the hedgerows, and could no more refrain from stopping and peeping than if they had been a couple of spaniels or terriers. Marty was quite sure he saw a yellow hammer on the bows of that great ash, and while he was peeping he missed the sight of a white-throated stout, which had run across the path and was described as much fervor by the junior Tommy. Then there was a little greenfinch, just fledged, fluttering along the ground, and it seemed quite possible to catch it till it managed to flutter under the blackberry bush. Hedy could not be got to give any heed to these things, so Molly was called on for her ready sympathy, and peeped with open mouth wherever she was told and said, LOCKS whenever she was expected to wonder. Molly hastened on with some alarm when Hedy had come back and called to them and on to us angry, but Marty ran on first, shouting, We found the speckled turkey's nest, mother, with the instinct of confidence that people who bring good news are never in fault. Ah, said Mrs. Poiser, really forgetting all discipline in this pleasant surprise, that's a good lad, why where is it? Down in ever such a hole under the hedge, I saw it first, looking after the greenfinch, and she sat on the nest. You didn't frighten her, I hope, said the mother, else she'll forsake it. No, I went away as still as still and whispered to Molly, didn't I, Molly? Well, well, now come on, said Mrs. Poiser, and walk before father and mother and take your little sister by the hand. We must go straight on now, good boys don't look after the birds of a Sunday. But mother, said Marty, you said you'd give half a crown to find the speckled turkey's nest, maint I have the half crown put into my money box. We'll see about that, my lad, if you walk along now like a good boy. The father and mother exchanged a significant glance of amusement at their eldest born's acuteness. But on Tommy's round face there was a cloud. Mother, he said, half crying, Marty's got ever so much more money in his box nor I've gotten mine. Money, we want a half a town in my box, said Toddy. Hush, hush, hush, said Mrs. Poiser. Did ever anybody hear such naughty children? Nobody shall ever see their money boxes any more if they don't make haste and go on to church. This dreadful threat had the desired effect, and through the two remaining fields the three pair of small legs trotted on without any serious interruption, notwithstanding a small pond full of tadpoles, alias, bullheads, which the lads looked at wistfully. The damp hay that must be scattered and turned afresh tomorrow was not a cheering sight to Mr. Poiser, who during hay and corn harvest had often some mental struggles as to the benefits of a day of rest. But no temptation would have induced him to carry on any fieldwork, however early in the morning, on a Sunday. For had not Michael Holsworth had a pair of box in this sweltered while he was plowing on Good Friday? That was a demonstration that work on sacred days was a wicked thing, and with wickedness of any sort Martin Poiser was quite clear that he would have nothing to do since money got by such means would never prosper. It almost makes your fingers itch to be at the hay now the sunshine so, he observed, as they passed through the big meadow. But it's poor foolishness to think a-saving by going against your conscience. There's that Jim Wakefield, as they used to call gentlemen Wakefield, used to do the same of the Sunday as weekdays, and took no heed to right or wrong as if there was neither god nor devil. And what's he come to? Why, I saw on myself last market day a carry and a basket with oranges in it. Ah, to be sure, said Mrs. Poiser emphatically, you make but a poor trap to catch luck if you go and bait it with wickedness. The money as is got so is like to burn holes in your pocket. I'd never wish us to leave our lads a six-pen, but what was got in the rightful way. And as for the weather, there's one above makes it, and we must put up with it. It's nothing of a plague to what the winches are. Notwithstanding the interruption in their walk, the excellent habit which Mrs. Poiser's clock had of taking time by the forelock had secured their arrival at the village while it was still a quarter to two. Though almost everyone who meant to go to church was already within the churchyard gate, those who stayed at home were chiefly mothers, like Timothy's best, who stood at her own door nursing her baby and feeling as women feel in that position that nothing else can be expected of them. It was not entirely to see Thia Speed's funeral that the people were standing about the churchyard so long before service began. That was their common practice. The women indeed usually entered the church at once, and the farmer's wives talked in an undertone to each other, over the tall pews about their illnesses and the total failure of doctor's stuff, recommending dandelion tea and other homemade specifics as far preferable, about the servants growing exorbitance as to wages, whereas the quality of their services declined from year to year, and there was no girl nowadays to be trusted any further than you could see her. About the bad price Mr. Dingall, the Tritleston grocer, was giving for butter, and the reasonable doubts that might be held as to his solvency, that Mrs. Dingall was a sensible woman, and they were all sorry for her, for she had very good kin. Meantime, the men lingered outside, and hardly any of them except the singers, who had a humming and fragmentary rehearsal to go through, entered the church until Mr. Irvine was in the desk. They saw no reason for that premature entrance. What could they do in church if they were there before service began? And they did not conceive that any power in the universe could take it ill of them if they stayed out of business. Chad Crainage looks like quite a new acquaintance today, for he has got his clean Sunday face, which always makes his little granddaughter cry at him as a stranger. But an experienced I would have fixed on him at once as the village blacksmith, after seeing the humble deference with which the big saucy fellow took off his hat and stroked his hair to the farmers. For Chad was accustomed to say that a working man must hold the candle to a personage understood to be as black as he was himself on weekdays. By which evil-sounding rule of conduct he meant what was, after all, rather virtuous than otherwise. Namely, that men who had horses to be shod must be treated with respect. Chad and the rougher sort of workmen kept aloof from the grave under the white thorn, where the burial was going forward. But Sandy Jim and several of the farm laborers made a group round it and stood with their hats off as fellow mourners with the mother and son. Others held a midway position, sometimes watching the group at the grave, sometimes listening to the conversation of the farmers, who stood in a knot near the church door and were now joined by Martin Poiser while his family passed into the church. On the outside of this knot stood Mr. Casson, the landlord of the Daniforn Arms, in his most striking attitude. That is to say, with the forefinger of his right hand thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat, his left hand in his britch's pocket and his head very much on one side, looking on the whole like an actor who has only a monosyllabic part entrusted to him but feels sure that the audience discerns his fitness for the leading business. Curiously in contrast with old Jonathan Burge, who held his hands behind him and leaned forward, coughing asthmatically with an inward scorn of all-knowingness that could not be turned into cash. The talk was in rather a lower tone than usual today, hushed a little by the sound of Mr. Irvine's voice reading the final prayers of the burial service. They had all had their word of pity for poor Thais, but now they had got upon the nearer subject of their own grievances against Thaschel, the squire's bailiff who played the part of stewards so far as it was not performed by old Mr. Daniforn himself. For that gentleman had the meanest to receive his own rent and make bargains about his own timber. This subject of conversation was an additional reason for not being loud, since Thaschel himself might presently be walking up the paved road to the church door. And soon they became suddenly silent, for Mr. Irvine's voice had ceased and the group round the white thorn was dispersing itself towards the church. They all moved aside and stood with their hats off while Mr. Irvine passed. Adam and Seth were coming next with their mother between them, for Joshua ran officiated as head sexton as well as clerk and was not yet ready to follow the rector into the vestry. But there was a pause before the three mourners came on. Lisbeth had turned round to look again towards the grave. Ah, there was nothing now but the brown earth under the white thorn. He cried less today than she had done any day since her husband's death. Along with all her grief there was mixed an unusual sense of her own importance in having a burial and in Mr. Irvine's reading a special service for her husband. And besides, she knew the funeral psalm was going to be sung for him. She felt this counter-excitement to her sorrow still more strongly as she walked with her sons towards the parish door and saw the friendly sympathetic nods of their fellow parishioners. The mother and sons passed into the church and one by one the loiterers followed, though some still lingered without. The sight of Mr. Donothorn's carriage, which was winding slowly up the hill, perhaps helping to make them feel that there was no need for haste. But presently the sound of the bassoon and the key bugles burst forth. The evening hymn, which always opened the service, had begun, and everyone must now enter and take his place. I cannot say that the interior of Hayslope Church was remarkable for anything except for the gray age of its oaken pews. Great square pews, mostly, ranged on each side of a narrow aisle. It was free indeed from the modern blemish of galleries. The choir had two narrow pews to themselves in the middle of the right-hand row so that it was a short process for Joshua Rand to take his place among them as principal base and return to his desk after the singing was over. The pulpit and desk, gray and old as the pews, stood on one side of the arch leading into the chancel, which also had its gray square pews for Mr. Donothorn's family and servants. Yet I assure you these gray pews with the buff-washed walls gave a very pleasing tone to the shabby interior and agreed extremely well with the ruddy faces and bright waistcoat. And there were liberal touches of crimson toward the chancel. For the pulpit and Mr. Donothorn's own pew had handsome crimson cloth cushions, and to close the vista, there was a crimson altar cloth embroidered with golden rays by Miss Lydia's own hand. But even without the crimson cloth, the effect must have been warm and cheering when Mr. Irvine was in the desk, being benignly round on that simple congregation, on the hearty old men with bent knees and shoulders perhaps, but with vigor left for much hedge-quipping and thatching, on the tall stalwart frames and roughly cut bronze faces of the stone cutters and carpenters, on the half-dozen well-to-do farmers with their apple-cheeked families, and on the clean old women, mostly farm laborers' wives, with their bit of snow-white cap border under their black bonnet, and with their withered arms bare from the elbow folded passively over their chest. For none of the old people held books, why should they, not one of them could read, but they knew a few good words by heart, and their withered lips now and then moved silently, following the service without any very clear comprehension indeed, but with a simple faith in its efficacy to ward off harm and bring blessing. And now all faces were visible, for all were standing up, the little children on the seats, peeping over the edge of the gray pews, while good Bishop Ken's evening hymn was being sung to one of those lively Psalm-tunes which died out with the last generation of rectors and choral parish clerks. Melodies die out, like the pipe of pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them. Adam was not in his usual place among the singers today, for he sat with his mother and Seth, and he noticed with surprise that Bartle Massey was absent too. All the more agreeable for Mr. Joshua Ran, who gave out his base notes with unusual complacency and threw an extra ray of severity into the glances he sent over his spectacles at the recusant Will Mascary. I beseech you to imagine Mr. Irvine looking round on this scene, in his ample white surplus that became him so well, with his powdered hair thrown back, his rich brown complexion and his finely cut nostril and upper lip. For there was a certain virtue in that benignant yet keen countenance as there is in all human faces from which a generous soul beamed out. And overall streamed the delicious June sunshine through the old windows with their desultory patches of yellow, red and blue that threw pleasant touches of color on the opposite wall. I think, as Mr. Irvine looked round today, his eyes rested an instant longer than usual on the square pew occupied by Martin Poiser and his family. And there was another pair of dark eyes that found it impossible not to wander thither and rest on that round pink and white figure. But Hetty was at that moment quite careless of any glances. She was absorbed in the thought that Arthur Donothorn would soon be coming into church, for the carriage must surely be at the church gate by this time. She had never seen him since she parted with him in the wood on Thursday evening, and— oh, how long the time had seemed! Things had gone on just the same as ever since that evening. The wonders that had happened then had brought no changes after them. They were already like a dream. When she heard the church door swinging, her heart beat so she dared not look up. She felt that her aunt was curtsying. She curtsied herself. That must be old Mr. Donothorn. He always came first. The wrinkled small old man, peering round with short-sighted glances at the bowing and curtsying congregation. Then she knew Miss Lydia was passing, and though Hetty liked so much to look at her fashionable little coal-scuttle bonnet with the wreath of small roses round it, she didn't mind it to-day. But there were no more curtsies. No, he was not come. She felt sure there was nothing else passing the pew door but the housekeeper's black bonnet and the lady's maid's beautiful straw hat that had once been Miss Lydia's, and then the powdered heads of the butler and footman. No, he was not there. Yet she would look now, she might be mistaken, for after all, she had not looked. So she lifted up her eyelids and glanced timidly at the cushioned pew in the chancel. There was no one but old Mr. Donothorn rubbing his spectacles with his white handkerchief and Miss Lydia opening the large guilt-edged prayer-book. The chill disappointment was too hard to bear. She felt herself turning pale, her lips trembling. She was ready to cry. Oh, what should she do? For the reason they would know she was crying because Arthur was not there, and Mr. Craig with the wonderful hot-house plant at his buttonhole was staring at her, she knew. It was dreadfully long before the general confession began so that she could kneel down. Two great drops would fall then, but no one saw them except good-natured Molly for her aunt and uncle knelt with their backs towards her. Molly, unable to imagine any cause for tears in church except faintness, of which she had a vague traditional knowledge, drew out of her pocket a queer little flat blue smelling-bottle, and after much labour in pulling the cork out, thrust the narrow neck under Heddy's nostrils. It done a smell, she whispered, thinking this was a great advantage which old salts had over fresh ones. They did you good without biting your nose. Heddy pushed it away peevishly, but this little flash of temper did what the salts could not have done. It roused her to wipe away the traces of her tears and try with all her might not to shed any more. Heddy had a certain strength in her vain little nature. She would have borne anything rather than be laughed at or pointed out with any other feeling than admiration. She would have pressed her own nails into her tender flesh rather than people should know a secret she did not want them to know. What fluctuations there were in her busy thoughts and feelings while Mr. Irvine was pronouncing the solemn absolution in her deaf ears and through all the tones of petition that followed. Anger lay very close to disappointment and soon won the victory over the conjectures her small ingenuity could devise to account for Arthur's absence on the supposition that he really wanted to come, really wanted to see her again. And by the time she rose from her knees mechanically because all the rest were rising, the colour had returned to her cheeks even with a heightened glow for she was framing little indignant speeches to herself saying she hated Arthur for giving her this pain. She would like him to suffer too. Yet while this selfish tumult was going on in her soul, her eyes were bent down on her prayer-book and the eyelids with their dark fringe looked as lovely as ever. Adam Veed thought so as he glanced at her for a moment on rising from his knees. But Adam's thoughts of Heady did not deafen him to the service. They rather blended with all the other deep feelings for which the church service was a channel to him this afternoon as a certain consciousness of our entire past and our imagined future blends itself with all our moments of keen sensibility. And to Adam the church service was the best channel he could have found for his mingled regret, yearning and resignation. Its interchange of beseeching cries for help without bursts of faith and praise, its recurrent responses and the familiar rhythm of its collect seemed to speak for him as no other form of worship could have done. As to those early Christians who had worshiped from their childhood upwards in catacombs, the torchlight and shadows must have seemed nearer the divine present than the heathenish daylight of the street. The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past. No wonder the secret escapes the unsympathizing observer, who might as well put on his spectacles to discern odors. But there was one reason why even a chance-comer would have found the service in a hastelope church more impressive than in most other village nooks in the kingdom. A reason of which I am sure you have not the slightest suspicion. It was the reading of our friend Joshua Ran. Where that good shoemaker got his notion of reading from remained a mystery even to his most intimate acquaintances. I believe, after all, he got it cheaply from Nature, who had poured some of her music into this honest conceited soul, as she had been known to do into other narrow souls before his. She had given him at least a fine-based voice and a musical ear, but I cannot positively say what he's alone with the rich chant in which he delivered the responses. The way he rolled from a rich deep forte into a melancholy cadence, subsiding at the end of the last word into a sort of faint resonance, like the lingering vibrations of a fine violin cello. I can compare to nothing for its strong, calm melancholy, but the rush and cadence of the wind among the autumn boughs. This may seem a strange mode of speaking about the reading of a parish clerk, a man in rusty spectacles with stubbly hair, a large occiput, and a prominent crown, but that is Nature's way. She will allow a gentleman of splendid physiognomy and poetic aspirations to sing woefully out of tune and not give him the slightest hint of it, and takes care that some narrow-browed fellow trolling a ballad in the corner of a pot house shall be as true to his intervals as a bird. Joshua himself was less proud of his reading than of his singing, and it was always with a sense of heightened importance that he passed from the desk to the choir. Still more today, it was a special occasion, for an old man familiar to all the parish had died a sad death, not in his bed, a circumstantial to the mind of the peasant, and now the funeral song was to be sung in memory of his sudden departure. Moreover, Barthie was not at church, and Joshua's importance in the choir suffered no eclipse. It was a solemn minor strain, they sang. The old psalm tunes have many a wail among them, and the word seemed to have a closer application than usual in the death of poor Thais. The mother and sons listened, each with peculiar feeling. Lisbeth had a vague belief that the psalm was doing her husband good. It was part of that decent burial, which she would have thought it a greater wrong to withhold from him than to have caused him many unhappy days while he was living. The more there was said about her husband, the more there was done for him, surely the safer he would be. It was poor Lisbeth's blind way of feeling that human love and pity are a ground of faith in some other love. Seth, who was easily touched, shed tears, and tried to recall, as he had done continually since his father's death, all that he had heard of the possibility that a single moment of consciousness at the last might be a moment of pardon and reconcilement. For was it not written in the very psalm they were singing that the divine dealings were not measured and circumscribed by time? Adam had never been unable to join in a psalm before. He had known plenty of trouble and vexation since he had been a lad, but this was the first thorough that had hemmed in his voice. And strangely enough, it was thorough because the chief source of his past trouble and vexation was forever gone out of his reach. He had not been able to press his father's hand before their parting and say, Father, you know it was all right between us. I never forgot what I owed you when I was a lad. You forgive me if I have been too hot and hasty now and then. Adam thought but little today of the hard work and the earnings he had spent on his father. His thoughts ran constantly on what the old man's feelings had been in moments of humiliation when he had held down his head before the rebukes of his son. When our indignation is born in submissive silence we are apt to feel twinges of doubt afterwards as to our own generosity, if not justice. How much more when the object of our anger has gone into everlasting silence and we have seen his face for the last time in the meekness of death. Ah, I was always too hard, Adam said to himself. It's a sore fault in me as I'm so hot and out of patience with people when they do wrong and my heart gets shut up against him so as I can't bring myself to forgive him. I see clear enough there's more pride nor love in my soul for I could sooner make a thousand strokes with the hammer from my father than bring myself to say a kind word to him. And there went plenty of pride and temper to the strokes as the devil will be having his finger in what we call our duties as well as our sin. May hap the best thing I ever did in my life was only doing what was easiest for myself. It's always been easier for me to work nor to sit still but the real tough job for me would be to master my own will and temper and go right against my own pride. It seems to me now if I was to find father at home tonight I should behave different but there's no no one. Perhaps nothing would be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late. It's well we should feel as life's so reckoning we can't make twice over. There's no real making amends in this world any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right. This was the keynote to which Adam's thoughts had perpetually returned since his father's death and the solemn wail of the funeral psalm was only an influence that brought back the old thoughts with stronger emphasis. So was the sermon which Mr. Irvine had chosen with reference to Pius's funeral. It's broke briefly and simply of the words, in the midst of life we are in death. How the present moment is all we can call our own for works of mercy, of righteous stealing, and of family tenderness. All very old truths but what we thought the oldest truth becomes the most startling to us in the week when we have looked on the dead face of one who's made a part of our own lives. Or when men want to impress us with the effect of a new and wonderfully vivid light, do they not let it fall on the most familiar objects that we may measure its intensity by remembering the former dimness? Then came the moment of the final blessing when the forever sublime words, the peace of God which passeth all understanding, seemed to blend with the calm afternoon sunshine that fell on the bowed heads of the congregation. And then the quiet rising, the mothers tying on the bonnets of the little maidens who had slept through the sermon, the fathers collecting the prayer books until all streamed out through the old archway into the green churchyard and began their neighborly talk, their simple civilities, and their invitations to tea. For on a Sunday everyone was ready to receive a guest. It was the day when all must be in their best clothes and their best humor. Mr. and Mrs. Poiser paused a minute at the church gate. They were waiting for Adam to come up, not being contented to go away without saying a kind word to the widow and her son. Well, Mrs. Bede, said Mrs. Poiser, as they walked on together, you must keep up your heart. Husbands and wives must be content when they've lived to rear their children and see one another's hair gray. Aye, aye, said Mr. Poiser, they want to have long to wait for one another then anyhow. And you've got two of the strappin'est sons of the country. And well you may, for I remember poor Thais, as fine abroad-shouldered fellow as need to be. And as for you, Mrs. Bede, why you're straighter of the back nor half the young women now? Eh, said Lisbeth, it's poor luck for the platter to wear well when it's broken too. The sooner I'm laid under the thorn the better. I'm no good to nobody now. Adam never took notice of his mother's little unjust plaint, but Seth said, Nay, mother, they must not say so. Thy sons'll never get another mother. That's true, lad, that's true, said Mr. Poiser, and it's wrong on us to give way to grief, Mrs. Bede, for it's like the children cryin' when the fathers and mothers take things from them. There's one above knows better nor us. Ah, said Mrs. Poiser, and it's poor work all I set in the dead above the livin'. It'd be better if folks had make much on us beforehand. It stood a beginnin' when we're gone. It's but little good you'll do a water in the last year's crop. Well, Adam, said Mr. Poiser, feeling that his wife's words were, as usual, rather incisive than soothing, and that it would be well to change the subject, you'll come and see us again now, I hope? I hadn't had a talk with you this long while, and the Mrs. here wants you to see what can be done with her best spinnin' wheel, for it's got broke, and it'll be a nice job to mend it. They'll want a bit of turnin'. You'll come as soon as you can now, will you? Mr. Poiser paused and looked around while he was speaking, as if to see where Hetty was, for the children were running on before. Hetty was not without a companion, and she had, besides, more pink and white about her than ever, for she held in her hand the wonderful pink and white hot-house plant, with a very long name—a scotch name, she supposed, since people said Mr. Craig the gardener was scotch. Adam took the opportunity of looking round, too, and I'm sure you will not require of him that he should feel any vexation in observing a pouting expression on Hetty's face as she listened to the gardener's small talk. Yet in her secret heart she was glad to have him by her side, for she would perhaps learn from him how it was Arthur had not come to church. Not that she cared to ask him the question, but she hoped the information would be given spontaneously. For Mr. Craig, like a superior man, was very fond of giving information. Mr. Craig was never aware that his conversation and advances were received coldly, for to shift one's point of view beyond certain limits is impossible to the most liberal and expansive mind. We are none of us aware of the impression we produce on Brazilian monkeys of feeble understanding. It is possible they see hardly anything in us. Moreover, Mr. Craig was a man of sober passions and was already in his tenth year of hesitation as to the relative advantages of matrimony and bachelorhood. It is true that now and then, when he had been a little heated by an extra glass of grog, he had been heard to say of Hetty that the last was well enough and that a man might do worse, but on convivial occasions men are apt to express themselves strongly. Martin Poiser held Mr. Craig in honour as a man who knew his business and who had great likes concerning soils and compost, but he was less of a favourite with Mrs. Poiser, who had more than once said in confidence to her husband, you might have found a Craig, but for my part I think he's welly like a caucus thinks the sun's rose of purpose to hear him crow. For the rest Mr. Craig was an estimable gardener and was not without reasons for having a high opinion of himself. He had also high shoulders and high cheekbones and hung his head forward a little as he walked along with his hands and his britches' pockets. I think it was his pedigree only that had the advantage of being Scotch and not his bringing up, for except that he had a stronger burr in his accent, his speech differed little from that of the loamshire people about him. But a gardener is Scotch, as a French teacher is Parisian. Well, Mr. Poiser, he said, before the good, slow farmer had time to speak, he'd carry in your hay tomorrow, I'm thinking. The glass sticks at change and you may rely upon my word, as will have more a downfall of four twenty-four hours has passed. You see that darkish blue cloud there upon the horizon. You know what I mean by the horizon, where the land and sky seems to meet. I, I, I see the clouds that Mr. Poiser, rise in or no rise in. It's right or my coldsworth's fallow and a foul fallow it is. Well, you mark my word, as that cloud will spread o'er the sky, as quick as you'd spread a tarpaulin over one of your hay-ricks. It's a great thing to have studied the look of the clouds. Lord bless you. The meteorological almanacs can learn me nothing, but there's a pretty sight of things I could let them up to, if they'd just come to me. And how are you, Mrs. Poiser? Thinking together in the red currant soon, I reckon, you'd a deal better gather them before they're all ripe with such weather as we've got to look forward to. How do you do, Mr. Speed, Mr. Craig continued without a pause, nodding, by the way, to Adam and Seth. I hope you enjoyed them spinach and gooseberries as I sent Chester with the other day. If you want vegetables while you're in trouble, you know where to come to. It's well known I'm not giving other folks things away, for when I've supplied the house, the garden is my own speculation, and it isn't every man the old squire could get as a bee equal to the undertaken, let alone asking whether he'd be willing. I've got to run my calculation fine, I can tell you to make sure I get in back the money as I pay the squire. I should like to see some of them fellows as make the Elmenechs look in as far before their noses as I've got to do every year as comes. They look pretty fur, though, said Mr. Poiser, turning his head on one side and speaking in rather a subdued, reverential tone. Why, what could come truer nor that pitcher of the cock with the big spurs as has got its head knocked down with the anchor and the firing and the ships behind? Why, that picture was made before Christmas, and yet it's come as true as the Bible. Why, the cock's French and the anchor's Nelson, and they told us that beforehand. Pee! said Mr. Craig. A man doesn't want to see fur as to know the English will beat the French. Why, I know a pal good authority, as it's a big Frenchman as reaches five foot high, and they live upon spoon-meat mostly. I know a man as his father had a particular knowledge of the French. I should like to know what them grass-hoppers are to do against such fine fellows as our young Captain Arthur. Why, it is astonish a Frenchman only to look at him. His arms thicker nor a Frenchman's body I'll be bound, for they pinch their cells in with stays, and it's easy enough for they got nothing on their insides. Where is the Captain as he wasn't at church today? said Adam. I was talking to him a Friday, and he said nothing about his going away. Oh, he's only gone to Eacaldale for a bit of fishing. I reckon he'll be back again for many days or more, for he's to be at all the ranging and preparing things for the coming age of the 30th of July. But he's bound to get in a way for a bit now and then. Him and the old squire fit one another like frost and flowers. Mr. Craig smiled and winked slowly as he made this last observation, but the subject was not developed farther. For now they had reached the turning in the road where Adam and his companions must say goodbye. The Gardner too would have had to turn off in the same direction, if he had not accepted Mr. Poiser's invitation to tea. Mrs. Poiser duly seconded the invitation, for she would have held it a deep disgrace not to make her neighbors welcome to her house. Personal likes and dislikes must not interfere with that sacred custom. Moreover, Mr. Craig had always been full of civilities to the family at the Hall Farm, and Mrs. Poiser was scrupulous in declaring that she had nothing to say again him, only it was a pity he couldn't be hatched or again and hatched different. So Adam and Seth, with their mother between them, wound the way down to the valley and up again to the old house, where a saddened memory had taken the place of a long, long anxiety, where Adam would never have to ask again as he entered, where's father? And the other family party, with Mr. Craig for company, went back to the pleasant bright house place at the Hall Farm, all with quiet minds except Teddy, who knew now where Arthur was gone, but was only the more puzzled and uneasy. For it appeared that his absence was quite voluntary, he need not have gone, he would not have gone if he had wanted to see her. She had a thickening sense that no lot could ever be pleasant to her again if her Thursday night's vision was not to be fulfilled. And in this moment of chill, bare, wintry disappointment and doubt, she looked towards the possibility of being with Arthur again, of meeting his loving glance and hearing his soft words with that eager yearning, which one may call the growing pain of passion. End of Chapter 18. Chapter 19 of Adam Beed. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Missy. Guangzhou, China. Adam Beed by George Elliott. Chapter 19. Adam on a working day. Notwithstanding Mr. Craig's prophecy, the dark blue cloud dispersed itself without having produced the threatened consequences. The weather, as he observed the next morning, the weather, you see, is a ticklish thing, and a fool will hit on it sometimes when a wise man misses. That's why the Almanacs get so much credit. It's one of them chancey things as fools thrive on. This unreasonable behavior of the weather, however, could displease no one else in Hay Slope besides Mr. Craig. All hands were to be out in the meadows this morning as soon as the dew had risen. The wives and daughters did double work in every farmhouse that the maids might give their help in tossing the hay. And when Adam was marching along the lanes with his basket of tools over his shoulder, he caught the sound of Joko's talk and ringing laughter from behind the hedges. The Joko's talk of haymakers is best at a distance. Like those clumsy bells round the clouds next, it has a rather coarse sound when it comes close, and may even grate on your ears painfully. But heard from far off, it mingles very prettily with the other joyous sounds of nature. Men's muscles move better when their soul are making merry music, though their merriment is of a poor blundering sort, not at all like the merriment of birds. And perhaps there is no time in a summer's day more cheering than when the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness of the morning when there is just a lingering hint of early coolness to keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth. The reason Adam was walking along the lanes at this time was because his work for the rest of the day lay at a country house about three miles off, which was being put in repair for the son of a neighboring squire. And he had been busy since early morning with the packing of panels, doors, and chimney pieces in a wagon, which was now gone on before him, while Jonathan Birch himself had ridden to the spot on horseback to await at the rival and direct the workman. This little walk was a rest to Adam, and he was unconsciously under the charm of the moment. It was a summer morning in his heart, and he saw Hedy in the sunshine, a sunshine without glare, with slanting rays that tremble between the delicate shadows of the leaves. He thought yesterday when he put out his hand to her as they came out of church that there was a touch of melancholy kindness in her face, such as he had not seen before. And he took it as a sign that she had some sympathy with his family trouble. Poor fellow. That touch of melancholy came from quite another source, but how was he to know? We look at the one little woman's face we love as we look at the face of our mother Earth and see all sorts of answers to our own yearning. It was impossible for Adam not to feel that what had happened in the last week had brought the prospect of marriage nearer to him. Hither too he had felt keenly the danger that some other man might step in and get possession of Hedy's heart and hand while he himself was still in a position that made him shrink from asking her to accept him. Even if he had had a strong hope that she was fond of him, and his hope was far from being strong, he had been too heavily burdened with other claims to provide a home for himself and Hedy, a home such as he could expect her to be content with, after the comfort and plenty of the farm. Like all strong natures, Adam had confidence in his ability to achieve something in the future. He felt sure he should someday, if he lived, be able to maintain a family and make a good broad path for himself. But he had too cool ahead not to estimate to the full the obstacles that were to be overcome. And the time would be so long. And there was Hedy, like a bright-cheeked apple hanging over the orchard wall within sight of everybody, must long for her. To be sure, if she loved him very much, she would be content to wait for him. But did she love him? His hopes had never risen so high that he had dared to ask her. He was clear-sighted enough to be aware that her uncle and aunt would have looked kindly on his suit. And indeed, without this encouragement, he would never have persevered in going to the farm. But it was impossible to come to any but fluctuating conclusions about Hedy's feeling. She was like a kitten, a man distracting in pretty looks that meant nothing for everybody that came near her. But now he could not help saying to himself that the heaviest part of his burden was removed and that even before the end of another year his circumstances might be brought into a shape that would allow him to think of marrying. It would always be a hard struggle with his mother, he knew. She would be jealous of any wife he might choose and she had set her mind especially against Hedy. Perhaps for no other reason than that she suspected Hedy to be the woman he had chosen. It would never do, he feared, for his mother to live in the same house with him when he was married. And yet how hard she would think it if he asked her to leave him. Yes, there was a great deal of pain to be gone through with his mother, but it was a case in which he must make her feel that his will was strong. It would be better for her in the end. For himself he would have liked that they should all live together till Seth was married and they might have built a bit themselves in the house and made more room. He did not like to part with the lad. They had hardly ever been separated for more than a day since they were born. But Adam had no sooner caught his imagination leaping forward in this way, making arrangements for an uncertain future than he checked himself. A pretty building I'm making without either bricks or timber. I'm up at the Garrett already and I haven't so much as dug the foundation. Whenever Adam was strongly convinced of any proposition it took the form of a principle in his mind. It was knowledge to be acted on as much as the knowledge that damp will cause rust. Perhaps here lay the secret of the hardness he had accused himself of. He had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling how are we to get enough patience and charity towards our stumbling, falling companions in the long and changeable journey? And there is but one way in which a strong determined soul can learn it. By getting his heartstrings round round the weak and erring so that he must share not only the outward consequence of their error, but their inward suffering. That is a long and hard lesson. And Adam had at present only learned the alphabet of it in his father's sudden death, which by annihilating in an instant all that had stimulated his indignation had sent a sudden rush of thought and memory over what had claimed his pity and tenderness. But it was Adam's strength, not its correlative hardness that influenced his meditations this morning. He had long made up his mind that it would be wrong as well as foolish for him to marry a blooming young girl so long as he had no other prospects than that of growing poverty with a growing family. And his savings had been so constantly drawn upon, besides the terrible sweep of paying for a set substitute in the militia, that he had not enough money beforehand to furnish even a small cottage and keep something in reserve against a rainy day. He thought that he should be firmer on his legs by and by, but he could not be satisfied with a vague confidence in his arm and brain. He must have definite plans and said about them at once. The partnership with Jonathan Burge was not to be thought of at present. There were things implicitly tacked to it that he could not accept. But Adam thought that he and Seth might carry on a little business for themselves in addition to their journeyman's work by buying a small stock of superior wood and making articles of household furniture which Adam had no end of contrivance with. Seth might gain more by working at separate jobs under Adam's direction than by his journeyman's work, and Adam, in his over-hours, could do all the nice work that required peculiar skill. The money gained in this way, with the good wages he received as foreman, would soon enable them to get beforehand with the world, so sparingly as they would all live now. No sooner had this little plan shaped itself in his mind than he began to be busy with exact calculations of wood to be bought and the particular article of furniture that should be undertaken first, a kitchen cupboard of his own contrivance, with such an ingenious arrangement of sliding doors and bolts, such convenient nooks for stowing household provinder and such a symmetrical result to the eye, that every good housewife would be in raptures with it and fall through all the gradations of melancholy longing until her husband promised to buy it for her. Adam pictured to himself Mrs. Poiser, examining it with her keen eye in vain to find out a deficiency. And, of course, close to Mrs. Poiser stood heady, and Adam was again beguiled from calculations and contrivances into dreams and hope. Yes, he would go and see her this evening. It was so long since he had been at the Hall Farm. He would have liked to go to the night school to see why Bartle Matthew had not been at church yesterday, for he feared his old friend was ill. But unless he could manage both visits, this last must be put off till tomorrow. The desire to be near heady and to speak to her again was too strong. As he made up his mind to this, he was coming very near to the end of his walk, within the sound of the hammer that worked on the refitting of the old house. The sound of tools to a clever workman who loves his work is like the tentative sounds of the orchestra to the violinist who has to bear his part in the overture. The strong fibers begin their accustomed thrill, and what was the moment before joy, vexation, or ambition begins its change into energy. All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet from the narrow limits of our personal lot, in the labor of our right arm, the cunning of our right hand, or the still creative activity of our thought. Look at Adam through the rest of the day as he stands on the scaffolding with the two-feet ruler in his hand, whistling low while he considers how a difficulty about a floor-joist or a window frame is to be overcome, or as he pushes one of the younger workmen aside and takes his place in upheaving a weight of timber, saying, let alone, lad, these got too much gristle of their bones yet, or as he fixes his keen black eyes on the motions of a workman on the other side of the room and warns him that his distances are not right. Look at this broad-shouldered man with the bare muscular arms and the thick, firm black hair, tossed about like trodden meadowgrass whenever he takes off his paper cap, and with the strong baritone voice bursting every now and then into loud and solemn, solemn tune, as if seeking an outlet for a superfluous strength, yet presently checking himself, apparently crossed by some thought which jars with the same. Perhaps, if you had not been already in the secret, you might not have guessed what sad memories, what warm affection, what tender, fluttering hope had their home in this athletic body with the broken fingernail. In this rough man who knew no better lyrics than he could find in the old and new version and an occasional hymn, who knew the smallest possible amount of profane history and for whom the motion and shape of the earth, the course of the sun and the changes of the season, lay in the region of mystery just made visible by fragmentary knowledge. It had cost Adam a great deal of trouble and his work in over-hours to know what he knew over and above the secrets of his handicraft, his years and the nature of the materials he worked with, which was made easy to him by inborn and inherited faculty to get the mastery of his pen and write a plain hand, to spell without any other mistakes than must in fairness be attributed to the unreasonable character of orthography rather than to any deficiency in the speller and moreover to learn his musical note and part singing. Besides all this, he had read his Bible, including the apocryphal book, Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, The Pilgrim's Progress with Bunyan's Life and Holy War, a great deal of Bailey's Dictionary, Valentine and Orson, and part of a history of Babylon, which Bartel Massey had lent him. He might have had many more books from Bartel Massey, but he had no time for reading the common print, as Lisbeth called it, so busy as he was with figures in all the leisure moments which he did not fill up with extra carpentry. Adam, you perceive, was by no means a marvelous man, nor properly speaking a genius. Yet I will not pretend that his was an ordinary character among workmen, and it would not be at all a safe conclusion that the next best man you may happen to see with a basket of tools over his shoulder and a paper cap on his head has the strong conscience and the strong sense, the blended susceptibility and self-command of our friend Adam. He was not an average man. Yet such manatee are reared here and there in every generation of our peasant artisan. With an inheritance of affections nurtured by a simple family life of common need and common industry and an inheritance of faculties trained in skillful, courageous labor, they make their way upward, rarely as geniuses, most commonly as painstaking honest men, with the skill and conscience to do well the tasks that lie before them. Their lives have no discernible echo beyond the neighborhood where they dwelt, but you are almost sure to find a good piece of road, some building, some application of mineral produce, some improvement in farming practice, some reform of parish abuses with which their names are associated by one or two generations after them. Their employers were the richer for them. The work of their hands has worn well and the work of their brains has guided well the hands of other men. They went about in their youth in flannel or paper caps, in coats black with cold dust in old age their white hairs are seen in a place of honor at church and at market, and they tell their well-dressed sons and daughters seated around the bright hearth on winter evening how pleased they were when they first earned their two pens a day. Others there are who die poor and never put out the work with coal on weekdays. They have not had the art of getting rich, but they are men of trust, and when they die before the work is all out of them it is as if some main screw who employed them says, where shall I find their like? End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 of Adam Bede This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Missy Guangzhou, China Adam Bede by George Elliott Chapter 20 Adam Visits the Hall Farm Adam came back from his work in the empty wagon. That was why he had changed his clothes and was ready to set out to the hall farm when it still wanted a quarter to seven. What's the got thy Sunday clues on for? said Lisbeth complainingly as he came downstairs. They are to go into the school that I best coat. No mother. Said Adam quietly. I'm going to the hall farm. But may happen may go to the school after. So they must not wonder if I'm a bit late. Suffer be at home in half an hour. He's only gone to the village. So they wouldn't mind. Hey, and what's the got thy best clues on for to go to the hall farm? The poiser folks see thee in them yesterday, I warrant. What does mean by turn and work a day into Sunday of Adam? It's poor keeping company with folks who don't like to see thee in their work and jacket. Goodbye, mother. I can't stay. Putting on his hat and going out. But he had no sooner gone a few paces beyond the door than Lisbeth became uneasy at the thought that she had vexed him. Of course the secret of her objection to the best clothes was her suspicion that they were put on for Heddie's sake. But deeper than all her peevishness lay the need that her son should love her. She hurried after him and laid hold of his arm before he had got halfway down to the brook, and said, Nay, my lad, they wouldn't go away angered with thy mother, and her got not to do but to sit by her stand and think on thee. Nay, Nay, mother, said Adam gravely, and standing still while he put his arm on her shoulder. I'm not angered, but I wish for thy own sake these be more contented to let me do what I've made up my mind to do. I'll never be no other than a good son to thee as long as we live. But a man has other feelings besides what he owes to his father and mother, and the odd not to want to rule over me body and soul. And they must make up thy mind as I'll have a right to do what I like. So let us have no more words about it. Hey, said Lizbeth, not willing to show that she felt the real bearing of Adam's word, and who likes to see thee thy best clothes better know thy mother. And when these got thy face washed, and clean as the smooth white pivot, and thy hair comb so nice, and thy eyes as sparkling, what else is there as thy old mother should like to look at half so well. And they shall put on thy Sunday clothes when thee likes for me, and never plague thee no more about him. Well, well. Good-bye, mother, said Adam, kissing her and hurrying away. He saw there was no other means of putting an end to the dialogue. Lizbeth stood still on the spot, shaking her eyes and looking after him till he was quite out of sight. She felt to the full all the meaning that had lain in Adam's word. And as she lost sight of him and turned back slowly into the house, she said aloud to herself, for it was her way out in the long days when her husband and sons were at their work. Hey, he'll be telling me as he's going to bring her home one of these days. And she'll be Mrs. Ormy, and I'm un-look-on-belike while she uses the blue-edged platters and brakes and me-ha, though there's never been one broke since my old man and me brought him at the county fair. Twenty here come next to a scintide. Hey, she went on still louder as she caught up her knitting from the table. But she'll never knit the lad's stockings nor foot of neither, while I live. And when I'm gone he'll be thinkin' as nobody'll never fit leg and foot as his old mother did. She'll know nothin' and narrow and in heel and all warrant, and she'll make a long tow as he cannot get his boots on. That's what comes of Mary and young winches. I were gone thirty in the father, too, before we were married, and young enough, too. She'll be a poor dratchel by then she's thirty, a Mary and a Thaddon before her teeth shall come. Adam walked so fast that he was at the yard gate before seven. Martin Poiser and the grandfather were not yet come in from the meadow. Everyone was in the meadow, even to the black and tan terrier. No one kept watchin' the yard but the bulldog. And when Adam reached the house door, which stood wide open, he saw there was no one in the bright, clean house plate. But he guessed where Mrs. Poiser and someone else would be, quite within hearing. So he knocked on the door and said in his strong voice, Mrs. Poiser within? Come in, Mr. Beat, come in! Mrs. Poiser called out from the dairy. She always gave Adam this title when she received him in her own house. You may come into the dairy, if you will, for I cannot justly leave the cheese. Adam walked into the dairy where Mrs. Poiser and Nancy were crushing the first evening cheese. Why, you might think you are come to a dead house that Mrs. Poiser, as he stood in the open doorway. They're all in the meadow, but Martin's sure to be in a forelong, for they're leavin' the hay-cock tonight ready for carryin' first thing to-morrow. I've been forced to have Nancy in, but a peccant is caddy must gather the red currants tonight. The fruit always ripens so contrary just when every hand's wanted, and there's no trust in the children together it, for they put more into their own mouths nor into the basket, you might as well set the wasps together the fruit. Adam longed to say he would go into the garden till Mr. Poiser came in, but he was not quite courageous enough. So he said, I could be lookin' at your spinnin' wheel then and see what one's doin' to it. No, I've put it away in the right-hand parlor, but let it be till I confetch it and show it to you. I'd be glad now if you'd run into the garden and tell Hedy to send Totty in. The child'll run in if she's told, and I know Hedy's leadin' to eat too many currants. I'll be much obliged to you, Mr. Bede, if you'll go and send her in. And there's the York and Lancaster roses beautiful in the garden now. You'll like to see them, but you'd like a drink away first, perhaps. I know you're fond away as most folks is when they henna got to crush it out. I said, Adam, a drink away is always a treat to me. I'd rather have it than beer any day. I, I, said Mrs. Poiser, reaching a small white bathen that stood on the shelf and dipping it into the wait-hub. The smell of bread sweet to everybody but the baker. The Mr. Wines always say, Oh, Mrs. Poiser, I envy you, your dairy, and I envy you, your chickens, and what a beautiful thing a farmhouse is, to be sure. And I say, yes, the farmhouse is a fine thing for them is look on, and don't know the liftin' and the standin' that is belongs to it. Why, Mrs. Poiser, you wouldn't like to live anywhere else but in a farmhouse, so well as you manage it, but, Adam, taking the basin. And there can be nothing to look at, pleasanter nor a fine milk cow, standin' up to its knees in pasture, and the new milk frothin' in the pail and the fresh butter ready for market, and the calves in the poultry. Here's to your health, and may you always have strength to look after your own dairy and set a pattern to all the farmer's wives in the country. Mrs. Poiser was not to be caught in the weakness of smiling at a compliment, but a quiet complacency overspread her face like a stealing fun-bean and gave a milder glance than usual to her blue-gray eyes as she looked at Adam drinking the whey. Ah, I think I taste that whey now. With a flavor so delicate, the one can hardly distinguish it from an odor, and with that soft, gliding warmth that fills one's imagination with a still happy dreaminess. And the light music of the dropping whey is in my ears, mingling with the twittering of a bird outside the wire-network window, the window overlooking the garden and shaded by tall gilder roses. Have a little more, Mr. Bede, said Mrs. Poiser, as Adam set down the basin. No, thank you. I'll go into the garden now and send in the little lass. I do, and tell her to come to her mother in the dairy. Adam walked round by the rickyard at present empty of ricks to the little wooden gate leading into the garden, once the well-tended kitchen garden of a manor house. Now, but for the handsome brick wall with stone coping that ran along one side of it, a true farmhouse garden with hardy perennial flowers, unpruned fruit trees, and kitchen vegetables growing together in careless, half-neglected abundance. In that leafy, flowery, bushy time to look for anyone in this garden was like playing at hide-and-seek. There were the tall hollyhocks beginning to flower and dazzle the eye with their pink, white, and yellow. There were the syringias and gilder roses, all large and disorderly for want of trimming. There were leafy walls of scarlet beans and late peas. There was a row of bushy filberts in one direction and in another a huge apple tree making a barren circle under its low-spreading valves. But what signified a barren patch or two? The garden was so large. There was always a superfluity of broad bean. It took nine or ten of Adam's strides to the end of the uncut grass walk that ran by the side of them. And as for other vegetables, there was so much more room than was necessary for them that in the rotation of crops a large, flourishing bed of groundtle was of yearly occurrence on one spot or other. The very rose trees at which Adam stopped to pluck one looked as if they grew wild. They were all huddled together in bushy masses, now flaunting with wide open petals, almost all of them of the streaked pink and white kind which doubtless stated from the union of the houses of York and Lancaster. Adam was wise enough to choose a compact province rose that peeped out half-smothered by its flaunting, scentless neighbors, and held it in his hand. He thought he should be more at ease holding something in his hand as he walked on to the far end of the garden, where he remembered there was the largest row of current trees, not far off from the great yew tree arbor. But he had not gone many steps beyond the roses when he heard the shaking of a bow and a boy's voice saying, Now then, Tati, hold out your penny, there's a duck. The voice came from the bowels of a tall cherry tree where Adam had no difficulty in discerning a small blue pinafored figure perched in a commodious position where the fruit was thickest. Doubtless Tati was below behind the screen of peas. Yes, with her bonnet hanging down her back and her fat face dreadfully smeared with red juice turned up towards the cherry tree while she held her little round hole of a mouth and her red stained pinafore to receive the promised downfall. I'm sorry to say, more than half the cherries that fell were hard and yellow instead of juicy and red, but Tati spent no time in useless regents and she was already sucking the third juiciest when Adam said, There now, Tati, you've got your cherries. Run into the house with them and to mother, she wants you, she's in the dairy. Run in this minute, there's a good little girl. He lifted her up in his strong arms and kissed her as he spoke, and there was a tiresome interruption to cherry eating, and when he set her down she trotted off quite silently towards the house sucking her cherries as she went along. Tommy was lad, take care you're not shot for a little thieving bird, said Adam, as he walked on towards the current trees. He could see there was a large basket at the end of the row. Hedy would not be far off and Adam already felt as if she were looking at him. Yet when he turned the corner she was standing with her back towards him and stooping together the low hanging fruit. Strange that she had not heard him coming. Perhaps it was because she was making the leaves rustle. She started when she became conscious that someone was near, started so violently that she dropped the basin with the currents in it. And then, when she saw it was Adam, she turned from pale to deep red. That blush made his heart beat with a new happiness. Hedy had never blushed at seeing him before. I frightened you, he said, with a delicious sense that it didn't signify what he said since Hedy seemed to see as much as he did. Let me pick the currents up. That was soon done, for they had only fallen in a tangled mass on the grass plot. And Adam, as he rose and gave her the basin again, looked straight into her eyes with the subdued tenderness that belongs to the first moments of hopeful love. Hedy did not turn away her eyes. Her blush had subsided and she met his glance with a quiet sadness which contented Adam because it was so unlike anything he had seen in her before. There's not many more currents to get, she said. I shall soon have done now. I'll help you, said Adam. And he fetched a large basket which was nearly full of currents and set it close to them. Not a word more was spoken as they gathered the currents. Adam's heart was too full to speak and he thought Hedy knew all that was in it. She was not indifferent to his presence after all. She had blushed when she saw him. And then there was that touch of sadness that she had seen before. And then there was that touch of sadness about her, which must surely mean love, since it was the opposite of her usual manner which had often impressed him as indifferent. And he could glance at her continually as she bent over the fruit while the level evening sunbeams stole through the thick apple tree boughs and rested on her round cheek and neck as if they too were in love with her. It was to Adam the time that a man can least forget in afterlife. The time when he believes that the first woman he has ever loved betrays by a slight something, a word, a tone, a glance, the quivering of a lip or an eyelid that she is at least beginning to love him in return. The sign is so slight it is scarcely perceptible to the ear or eye. He could describe it to no one. It is the mere feather touch yet it seems to have changed his whole being to have merged an uneasy yearning into a delicious unconsciousness of everything but the present moment. So much of our early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory. We can never recall the joy with which we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our father's back in childhood. Doubtless that joy is wrought up into our nature as the sunlight of long past mornings is wrought up in the soft mellowness of the apricot. But it is gone forever from our imagination and we can only believe in the joy of childhood. But the first glad moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the recurrent sensation of a sweet odor breathed in a far-off hour of happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to tenderness that feeds the madness of jealousy and adds the last keenness to the agony of despair. Heady bending over the red bunches the level rays piercing the screen of apple tree-bows the length of bushy garden beyond his own emotion as he looked at her and believed that she was thinking of him and that there was no need for them to talk. Adam remembered it all to the last moment of his life. And Heady. You know quite well that Adam was mistaken about her. Like many other men he thought the signs of love for another were signs of love towards himself. When Adam was approaching unseen by her she was absorbed, as usual, in thinking and wondering about Arthur's possible return. The sound of any man's footstep would have affected her just in the same way. She would have felt it might be Arthur before she had time to see and the blood that first shook her cheek in the agitation of that momentary feeling would have rushed back again at the sight of anyone else, just as much as at the sight of Adam. He was not wrong in thinking that a change had come over Heady. The anxieties and fears of a first passion with which she was trembling had become stronger than vanity had given her for the first time that sense of helpless dependence on another's feeling which awakens the clinging, deprecating womanhood even in the shallowest girl that can ever experience it and creates in her a sensibility to kindness which found her quite hard before. For the first time Heady felt that there was something soothing to her in Adam's timid yet manly tenderness. She wanted to be treated lovingly. Oh, it was very hard to bear this blank of absence, silence, apparent indifference after those moments of glowing love. She was not afraid that Adam would tease her with love-making and flattering speeches like her other admirers. He had always been so reserved to her. She could enjoy without any fear the sense that this strong brave man loved her and was near her. It never entered into her mind that Adam was pityable, too, that Adam, too, must suffer one day. Heady, we know, was not the first woman that had behaved more gently to the man who loved her in vain because she had herself begun to love another. It was a very old story, but Adam knew nothing about it, so he drank in this sweet delusion. That'll do, said Heady after a little while. Aunt wants me to leave some on the trees. I'll take them in now. It's very well I came to carry the basket, said Adam, for it had been too heavy for your little arms. No, I could have carried it with both hands. Oh, I dare say, said Adam, smiling, and been as long getting into the house as a little aunt carrying a caterpillar. Have you ever seen those tiny fellows carrying things four times as big as themselves? No, said Heady, indifferently, not caring to know the difficulties of aunt life. Oh, I used to watch them often when I was a lad, but now you see I can carry the basket with one arm as if it was an empty nutshell to review the other arm to lean on. Won't you? Such big arms as mine were made for little arms like yours to lean on. Heady smiled faintly and put her arm within his. Adam looked down at her, but her eyes were turned dreamily toward another corner of the garden. Have you ever been to Eagledale, she said, as they walked slowly along? Yes, said Adam, pleased to have her ask a question about herself. Ten years ago, when I was a lad, I went to see about some work there. It's a wonderful sight, rocks and caves such as you never saw in your life. I never had a right notion of rocks till I went there. How long did it take to get there? Why, it took us the best part of two days walking, but it's nothing of a day's journey for anybody as it's got a first-rate nag. The captain would get there in nine or ten hours, I'll be bound. He's such a rider, and I shouldn't wonder if he's back again tomorrow. He's too active to rest long in that lonely place, all by himself. For there's nothing but a bit of an inn in that part where he's gone to fish. I wish he'd got this state in his hands. That'd be the right thing for him, for it'd give him plenty to do, and he'd do it well, too, for all he's so young. He's got better notions of things than many a man twice his age. He spoke very handsome to me the other day about lending me money to set up a business, and if things came round that way, I'd rather be beholden to him nor to any man in the world. Adam was led on to speak about Arthur because he thought Hedy would be pleased to know that the young squire was so ready to befriend him. The fact entered into his future prospects, which he would like to seem promising in her eyes. And it was true that Hedy listened with an interest which brought a new light into her eyes and a half-smile upon her lips. How pretty the roses are now! Adam continued, pausing to look at them. See, I stole the prettiest, but I didn't mean to keep it myself. I think these, as are all pink, and have got a finer sort of green leaves, are prettier than the stripedons, don't you? He set down the basket and took the rose from his buttonhole. It smells very sweet, he said. Those stripedons have no smell. Stick it in your frock, and then you can put it in water after. It'd be a pity to let it fade. Hedy took the rose, smiling as she did so at the pleasant thought that Arthur could so soon get back if he liked. There was a flash of hope and happiness in her mind, and with a sudden impulse of gaiety she did what she had very often done before, stuck the rose in her hair, a little above the left ear. The tender admiration in Adam's face was slightly shadowed by reluctant disapproval. Hedy's love of finery was just the thing that would most provoke his mother, and he himself disliked it as much as it was possible for him to dislike anything that belonged to her. Ah, he said, that's like the ladies in the pictures at the chase. They've mostly got flowers with feathers or gold things in their hair, but somehow I don't like to see them. They always put me in mind of the painted women outside the shows at Treadles and Fair. What can a woman have to set her off better than her own hair, when it curls so like yours? If a woman's young and pretty, I think you can see her good looks all the better for her being plain dressed. Why, Dinah Morris looks very nice for all she wears such a plain cap and gown. It seems to me as a woman's face doesn't want flowers. Almost like a flower itself. I'm sure yours is. Oh, very well, said Hedy, with a little playful pout, taking the rose out of her hair. I'll put one of Dinah's caps on when we go in, and you'll see if I look better in it. She left one behind so I can take the pattern. Nay, nay, I don't want you to wear a Methodist cap like Dinah's. I dare say it's a very ugly cap, and I used to think when I saw her here as it was nonsense for her to dress different other people. But I never rightly noticed her till she came to see Mother last week, and then I thought the cap seemed to fit her face somehow as the acorn cup fits the acorn, and I shouldn't like to see her so well without it. But you've got another sort of face. I'd have you look just as you are now without anything to interfere with your own looks. It's like when a man's singing a good tune, you don't want to hear bells tinkling and interfering with the sound. He took her arm and put it within his again, looking down on her fondly. He was afraid she should think he had lectured her, imagining, as we are apt to do, that she had perceived all the thoughts he had only half expressed. And the thing he dreaded most was lest any cloud should come over this evening's happiness. For the world he would not have spoken of his love to Hedy yet, till this commencing kindness towards him should have grown into unmistakable love. In his imagination he saw long years of his future life stretching before him, blessed with the right to call Hedy his own. He was content with very little at present. So he took up the basket of currents once more and they went on towards the house. The scene had quite changed in the half hour that Adam had been in the garden. The yard was full of life now. Marty was letting the screaming geese through the gate and wickedly provoking the gander by hissing at him. The granary door was groaning on its hinges as Alec shut it after dealing out the corn. The horses were being let out to watering of all the three dogs and many whoops from Tim the Plowman as if the heavy animals who held down their meek intelligent heads and lifted their shaggy feet so deliberately were likely to rush wildly in every direction but the right. Everyone was come back from the meadow and when Hedy and Adam entered the house-place Mr. Poiser was seated in the three-cornered chair and the grandfather in the large armchair opposite looking on with pleasant expectation while the supper was being laid on the oak table. Mrs. Poiser had laid the cloth herself, a cloth made of homespun linen with a shining checkered pattern on it and of an agreeable whitey brown hue such as all sensible housewives like to see, none of your bleached shop rag that would wear into holes in no time but good homespun that would last for two generations. The cold veal, the fresh lettuces and the stuffed chine might well look tempting to hungry men who had dined at half past twelve o'clock. On the large deal table against the wall there were bright pewter plates and spoons and cans ready for Alec and his companion. For the master and servants ate their supper not far off each other which was all the pleasanter, because if a remark about tomorrow morning's work occurred to Mr. Poiser, Alec was at hand to hear it. Well, Adam, I'm glad to see you, said Mr. Poiser. What, you've been helping Hedy to gather the curings, eh? Come, sit ye down, sit ye down. Alec, since you had your supper with us and the missus has got one of her rare stuffed chines, I'm glad you're come. Hedy, said Mrs. Poiser, as she looked into the basket of currants to see if the fruit was fine, run upstairs and send Molly down. She's putting Totty to bed, and I want her to draw the ale for Nancy's busy yet of the dairy. You can see to the child, but whatever did you let her run away from you along with Tommy for and stuff herself with fruit as she can't eat a bit of good vitul? This was said in a lower tone than usual, while her husband was talking to Adam. For Mrs. Poiser was strict in adherence to her own rules of propriety, and she considered that a young girl was not to be treated sharply in the presence of a respectable man who was courting her. That would not be fair play. Every woman was young in her turn and had her chances of matrimony, which it was a point of honour for other women not to spoil. Just as one market woman who has sold her own eggs must not try to bulk another of a customer. Hedy made haste to run away upstairs, not easily finding an answer to her aunt's question, and Mrs. Poiser went out to see after Marty and Tommy and bring them into supper. Soon they were all seated, the two rosy lads, one on each side by the pale mother, a place being left for Hedy between Adam and her uncle. Alec, too, was come in and was seated in his far corner, eating cold broad beans out of a large dish with his pocket knife and finding a flavour in them which he would not have exchanged for the apple. What a time that girl is drawing the ale to be sure, said Mrs. Poiser, when she was dispensing her slices of stuffed chine. I think she sets the jug under and forgets to turn the tap, as there's nothing you can't believe of them winches. They'll set the empty kettle of the fire and then come an hour after to see if the water boils. She's drawn for the men, too, said Mr. Poiser. These shouldst had told her to bring our jug up first. Told her, said Mrs. Poiser, yes, the wind in my body and take the bellows, too, if I was to tell them girls everything as their own sharpness want to tell them. Mr. Bede, will you take some vinegar with your lettuce? Ah, you're in the right not. It spoils the flavour of the chine, to my thinking. It's poor eaten where the flavour of the meat lies of the croutons. There's folks as make bad butter and trust into the salt to hide it. Mrs. Poiser's attention was here diverted by the appearance of Molly, carrying a large jug, two small mugs making cans, all full of ale or small beer, an interesting example of the prehentile power possessed by the human hand. Poor Molly's mouth was rather wider open than usual as she walked along with her eyes fixed on the double cluster of vessels in her hands, quite innocent of the expression in her mistress's eye. Molly, I never knew your equals to think of your poor mother as as a widow and I took you with as good as no character and the times and times I've told you. I had not seen the lightning and the thunder shook her nerves the more for the wand of that preparation. With a vague alarm sense that she must somehow comport herself differently, she hastened her step a little towards the far-deal table where she might set down her can, caught her foot in her apron which had become untied and fell with a crash and a splash into a pool of beer whereupon a tittering explosion from Marty and Tommy and a serious elo from Mr. Poiser who saw his draft of ale offered. There you go, resumed Mrs. Poiser in a cutting tone as she rose and went towards the cupboard, while Molly began dolefully to pick up the fragments of pottery. It's what I told you would come over and over again and there's your month's wage gone and more to pay for that jug as I've had of the house this ten year and nothing ever happened to it before but the crockery you broke sin here in the house you've been would make a parson's wear. God forgive me for God of the copper it had been the same and you'd have been scalded in very like lame for life as there's no known but what you will be some day if you go on for anybody would think you'd got the st. Vitus's dance to see the things you throw down. It's a pity but what the bits was stacked up for you to see, though it's neither sin nor herein as it'll make much odds to you, anybody would think you were case-hardened. Poor Molly's tears were dropping fast by this time and in her desperation at the lively movement of the beer stream she was converting her apron into a mop while Mrs. Poiser, opening the cupboard turned a blighting eye upon her ah she went on you'll do no good with crying and making more wet to wipe up. It's all your own wilfulness as I tell you for there's nobody no call to break anything if they'll only go the right way to work. But wooden folks had need to have wooden things to handle and here must I take the brown and white jug as it's never been used three times this year and go down in the cellar myself and touch my death and be laid up with inflammation Mrs. Poiser had turned round from the cupboard with the brown and white jug in her hand when she caught sight of something at the other end of the kitchen perhaps it was because she was already trembling and nervous that the apparition had so strong an effect on her perhaps jug breaking like other crimes has a contagious influence however it was she stared and started like a ghost seer and the precious brown and white jug fell to the ground parting forever with its spout and handle did ever anybody see the like she said with a suddenly lowered tone after a moment bewildered glance round the room the jugs are bewitched I think it's them nasty glazed handles they slip over the finger like a snail why these let thy own whip fly at thy face said her husband who had now joined in the laugh of the young ones it's all very fine to look on and grin rejoin Mrs. Poiser but there's times when the crockery seems alive and flies out of your hand like a bird it's like the glass sometimes will crack as it stands what is to be broke will be broke for I never dropped a thing in my life for one to hold in it else I never should have kept the crockery all these years as I bought at my own wedding and Hetty are you mad whatever do you mean by coming down of that way and making one think as there's a ghost walking in the house a new outbreak of laughter while Mrs. Poiser was speaking was caused less by her sudden conversion to a fatalistic view of jug breaking than by that strange appearance of Hetty which had startled her aunt the little minx had found a black gown of her aunt and pinned it as close round her neck to look like Dinah's had made her hair as flat as she could and had tied on one of Dinah's high crowned borderless neck caps the thought of Dinah's pale grey face and mild grey eyes which the sight of the gown and cap brought with it made it a laughable surprise enough to see them replaced by Hetty's round rosy cheeks and coquettish dark eyes they always got off their chairs and jumped round her clapping their hand and even Alec gave a low ventral laugh as he looked up from his bean under cover of the noise Mrs. Poiser went into the back kitchen to send Nancy into the cellar with the great pewter measure which had some chance of being free from bewitchment why Hetty last our eternal methodist said Mr. Poiser with that comfortable slow enjoyment of a laugh which one only sees in stout people you must pull your face a deal longer you for one, mustn't she, Adam? how come you put them things on, eh? Adam said he liked Dinah's cap and gown better nor my clothes, said Hetty sitting down demerly he says folks looks better in ugly clothes nay, nay, said Adam looking at her admiringly I only said they seemed to suit Dinah but if I'd said you'd look pretty in them I should have said nothing but what was true why these thoughtless Hetty were a ghost didn't stir, said Mr. Poiser who now came back and took her seat again they looked as scared as scared it little signifies how I looked, said Mrs. Poiser looks a man no drugs nor laughin' neither as I see Mr. Beat, I'm sorry you've to wait so long for your ale but it's coming in a minute make yourself at home with the cold potatoes I know you like them Tommy, I'll send you to bed this minute if you don't give over laughin' what is there to laugh at I should like to know I'd sooner cry nor laugh at the sight of that poor things cap and there's them as it'd be better if they could make their selves like her in more ways nor put in on her cap it little becomes anybody of this house to make fun of my sister's child and her just gone away from us as it went to my heart to part with her and I know one thing as if trouble was to come and I was to be laid up in my bed and the children was to die as there's no knowing but what they will and the Murn was to come among the cattle again and everything went to rack and ruin I say we might be glad to get sight of Dinah's cap again with her own face under it whether it be border or no border for she's one of them things as looks the brightest on a rainy day and loves you the best when you're most in need of it Mrs. Poiser you perceive was aware that nothing would be so likely to expel the comic as the terrible Tommy who was of a susceptible disposition and very fond of his mother and who had besides eaten so many cherries as to have his feelings less under command than usual was so affected by the dreadful picture she had made of the possible future that he began to cry and the good-natured father, indulgent to all weaknesses but those of negligent farmers said to Hedy you'd better take the things off again Molas it hurts your aunt to see him Hedy went upstairs again and the arrival of the ale made an agreeable diversion for Adam had to give his opinion of the new tap which could not be otherwise than complimentary to Mrs. Poiser and then followed a discussion on the secrets of good brewing the folly of stinginess in hopping and the doubtful economy of a farmer's making his own malt Mrs. Poiser had so many opportunities of expressing herself with weight on these subjects that by the time supper was ended the ale jug refilled and Mr. Poiser's pipe alight she was once more in high good humor and ready at Adam's request to fetch the broken spinning wheel for his inspection ah said Adam looking at it carefully here's a nice bit of turn and wanted it's a pretty wheel I must have it up at the turn and shop in the village and do it there for I've no convenience for turning at home if you'll send it to Mr. Burge's shop at the morning I'll get it done for you by Wednesday I've been turning it over in my mind he continued looking at Mr. Poiser to make a bit more convenience at home for nice jobs of cabinet making I've always done a deal at such little things in odd hours and they're profitable for there's more workmanship nor material in them I look for me and Seth to get a little business for ourselves in that way for I know a man at Rosseter as will take as many things as we should make besides what we could get orders for round about Mr. Poiser entered with interest into a project which seemed a step towards Adam becoming a master man and Mrs. Poiser gave her approbation to the scheme of the movable kitchen cupboard which was to be capable of containing grocery, pickles, crockery and house linen in the utmost compactness without confusion Heddy, once more in her own dress with her neckerchief pushed a little backwards on this warm evening was seated picking currents near the window where Adam could see her quite well and so the time passed pleasantly till Adam got up to go he was pressed to come again soon but not to stay longer for at this busy time sensible people would not run the risk of being sleepy at five o'clock in the morning I shall take a step farther said Adam and go on to see Mr. Massey for he wasn't at church yesterday and I've not seen him for a week past I've never hardly known him to miss church before I said Mr. Poiser we've heard nothing about him he can give you no account but you'll never think of going there at this hour of the night said Mrs. Poiser, folding up her knitting oh, Mr. Massey sits up late said Adam and the night school's not over yet some of the men don't come till late they've got so far to walk and Bartle himself's never in bed till it's gone eleven I wouldn't have him to live with me then said Mrs. Poiser a drop in candle-grease about as you're like to tumble down on the floor the first thing in the morning I, eleven o'clock's late why, I sit up till after twelve often said Adam laughing but it isn't to eat and drink x-trees to work x-trees good night Mrs. Poiser good night, Hedy Hedy could only smile and not shake hands for hers were dyed and damp with current juice but all the rest gave a hearty shake to the large palm that was held out to them and said come again, come again I think of that now, said Mr. Poiser when Adam was out on the causeway sitting up till past twelve to do x-trees work you'll not find many men as six and twenty years old do to put to the shafts with him if you can catch Adam for a husband, Hedy you'll ride in your own spring-cart some day I'll be your warrant Hedy was moving across the kitchen with the men and the night school's not over yet and the night school's not over yet and the night school's not over yet and the night school's not over yet and the night school's not over yet Hedy was moving across the kitchen with the current so her uncle did not see the little toss of the head with which she answered him to ride in a spring-cart seemed a very miserable lot indeed to her now End of Chapter 20