prompt:
Chapter: BEFORE twelve o'clock there had been some heavy storms of rain, and the
water lay in deep gutters on the sides of the gravel walks in the garden
of Broxton Parsonage; the great Provence roses had been cruelly tossed
by the wind and beaten by the rain, and all the delicate-stemmed border
flowers had been dashed down and stained with the wet soil. A melancholy
morning--because it was nearly time hay-harvest should begin, and
instead of that the meadows were likely to be flooded.

But people who have pleasant homes get indoor enjoyments that they would
never think of but for the rain. If it had not been a wet morning, Mr.
Irwine would not have been in the dining-room playing at chess with his
mother, and he loves both his mother and chess quite well enough to pass
some cloudy hours very easily by their help. Let me take you into that
dining-room and show you the Rev. Adolphus Irwine, Rector of Broxton,
Vicar of Hayslope, and Vicar of Blythe, a pluralist at whom the severest
Church reformer would have found it difficult to look sour. We will
enter very softly and stand still in the open doorway, without awaking
the glossy-brown setter who is stretched across the hearth, with her
two puppies beside her; or the pug, who is dozing, with his black muzzle
aloft, like a sleepy president.

The room is a large and lofty one, with an ample mullioned oriel window
at one end; the walls, you see, are new, and not yet painted; but the
furniture, though originally of an expensive sort, is old and scanty,
and there is no drapery about the window. The crimson cloth over the
large dining-table is very threadbare, though it contrasts pleasantly
enough with the dead hue of the plaster on the walls; but on this cloth
there is a massive silver waiter with a decanter of water on it, of the
same pattern as two larger ones that are propped up on the sideboard
with a coat of arms conspicuous in their centre. You suspect at once
that the inhabitants of this room have inherited more blood than wealth,
and would not be surprised to find that Mr. Irwine had a finely cut
nostril and upper lip; but at present we can only see that he has a
broad flat back and an abundance of powdered hair, all thrown backward
and tied behind with a black ribbon--a bit of conservatism in costume
which tells you that he is not a young man. He will perhaps turn round
by and by, and in the meantime we can look at that stately old lady, his
mother, a beautiful aged brunette, whose rich-toned complexion is well
set off by the complex wrappings of pure white cambric and lace about
her head and neck. She is as erect in her comely embonpoint as a statue
of Ceres; and her dark face, with its delicate aquiline nose, firm proud
mouth, and small, intense, black eye, is so keen and sarcastic in its
expression that you instinctively substitute a pack of cards for the
chess-men and imagine her telling your fortune. The small brown hand
with which she is lifting her queen is laden with pearls, diamonds, and
turquoises; and a large black veil is very carefully adjusted over the
crown of her cap, and falls in sharp contrast on the white folds
about her neck. It must take a long time to dress that old lady in the
morning! But it seems a law of nature that she should be dressed so: she
is clearly one of those children of royalty who have never doubted their
right divine and never met with any one so absurd as to question it.

"There, Dauphin, tell me what that is!" says this magnificent old lady,
as she deposits her queen very quietly and folds her arms. "I should be
sorry to utter a word disagreeable to your feelings."

"Ah, you witch-mother, you sorceress! How is a Christian man to win a
game off you? I should have sprinkled the board with holy water before
we began. You've not won that game by fair means, now, so don't pretend
it."

"Yes, yes, that's what the beaten have always said of great conquerors.
But see, there's the sunshine falling on the board, to show you more
clearly what a foolish move you made with that pawn. Come, shall I give
you another chance?"

"No, Mother, I shall leave you to your own conscience, now it's clearing
up. We must go and plash up the mud a little, mus'n't we, Juno?" This
was addressed to the brown setter, who had jumped up at the sound of the
voices and laid her nose in an insinuating way on her master's leg. "But
I must go upstairs first and see Anne. I was called away to Tholer's
funeral just when I was going before."

"It's of no use, child; she can't speak to you. Kate says she has one of
her worst headaches this morning."

"Oh, she likes me to go and see her just the same; she's never too ill
to care about that."

If you know how much of human speech is mere purposeless impulse or
habit, you will not wonder when I tell you that this identical objection
had been made, and had received the same kind of answer, many hundred
times in the course of the fifteen years that Mr. Irwine's sister Anne
had been an invalid. Splendid old ladies, who take a long time to dress
in the morning, have often slight sympathy with sickly daughters.

But while Mr. Irwine was still seated, leaning back in his chair and
stroking Juno's head, the servant came to the door and said, "If
you please, sir, Joshua Rann wishes to speak with you, if you are at
liberty."

"Let him be shown in here," said Mrs. Irwine, taking up her knitting.
"I always like to hear what Mr. Rann has got to say. His shoes will be
dirty, but see that he wipes them Carroll."

In two minutes Mr. Rann appeared at the door with very deferential bows,
which, however, were far from conciliating Pug, who gave a sharp bark
and ran across the room to reconnoitre the stranger's legs; while the
two puppies, regarding Mr. Rann's prominent calf and ribbed worsted
stockings from a more sensuous point of view, plunged and growled over
them in great enjoyment. Meantime, Mr. Irwine turned round his chair and
said, "Well, Joshua, anything the matter at Hayslope, that you've come
over this damp morning? Sit down, sit down. Never mind the dogs; give
them a friendly kick. Here, Pug, you rascal!"

It is very pleasant to see some men turn round; pleasant as a sudden
rush of warm air in winter, or the flash of firelight in the chill dusk.
Mr. Irwine was one of those men. He bore the same sort of resemblance to
his mother that our loving memory of a friend's face often bears to the
face itself: the lines were all more generous, the smile brighter, the
expression heartier. If the outline had been less finely cut, his face
might have been called jolly; but that was not the right word for its
mixture of bonhomie and distinction.

"Thank Your Reverence," answered Mr. Rann, endeavouring to look
unconcerned about his legs, but shaking them alternately to keep off the
puppies; "I'll stand, if you please, as more becoming. I hope I see you
an' Mrs. Irwine well, an' Miss Irwine--an' Miss Anne, I hope's as well
as usual."

"Yes, Joshua, thank you. You see how blooming my mother looks. She beats
us younger people hollow. But what's the matter?"

"Why, sir, I had to come to Brox'on to deliver some work, and I thought
it but right to call and let you know the goins-on as there's been i'
the village, such as I hanna seen i' my time, and I've lived in it man
and boy sixty year come St. Thomas, and collected th' Easter dues for
Mr. Blick before Your Reverence come into the parish, and been at the
ringin' o' every bell, and the diggin' o' every grave, and sung i' the
choir long afore Bartle Massey come from nobody knows where, wi' his
counter-singin' and fine anthems, as puts everybody out but himself--one
takin' it up after another like sheep a-bleatin' i' th' fold. I know
what belongs to bein' a parish clerk, and I know as I should be wantin'
i' respect to Your Reverence, an' church, an' king, if I was t' allow
such goins-on wi'out speakin'. I was took by surprise, an' knowed
nothin' on it beforehand, an' I was so flustered, I was clean as if I'd
lost my tools. I hanna slep' more nor four hour this night as is past
an' gone; an' then it was nothin' but nightmare, as tired me worse nor
wakin'."

"Why, what in the world is the matter, Joshua? Have the thieves been at
the church lead again?"

"Thieves! No, sir--an' yet, as I may say, it is thieves, an' a-thievin'
the church, too. It's the Methodisses as is like to get th' upper hand
i' th' parish, if Your Reverence an' His Honour, Squire Donnithorne,
doesna think well to say the word an' forbid it. Not as I'm a-dictatin'
to you, sir; I'm not forgettin' myself so far as to be wise above my
betters. Howiver, whether I'm wise or no, that's neither here nor there,
but what I've got to say I say--as the young Methodis woman as is at
Mester Poyser's was a-preachin' an' a-prayin' on the Green last night,
as sure as I'm a-stannin' afore Your Reverence now."

"Preaching on the Green!" said Mr. Irwine, looking surprised but quite
serene. "What, that pale pretty young woman I've seen at Poyser's? I saw
she was a Methodist, or Quaker, or something of that sort, by her dress,
but I didn't know she was a preacher."

"It's a true word as I say, sir," rejoined Mr. Rann, compressing his
mouth into a semicircular form and pausing long enough to indicate three
notes of exclamation. "She preached on the Green last night; an' she's
laid hold of Chad's Bess, as the girl's been i' fits welly iver sin'."

"Well, Bessy Cranage is a hearty-looking lass; I daresay she'll come
round again, Joshua. Did anybody else go into fits?"

"No, sir, I canna say as they did. But there's no knowin' what'll come,
if we're t' have such preachin's as that a-goin' on ivery week--there'll
be no livin' i' th' village. For them Methodisses make folks believe
as if they take a mug o' drink extry, an' make theirselves a bit
comfortable, they'll have to go to hell for't as sure as they're born.
I'm not a tipplin' man nor a drunkard--nobody can say it on me--but I
like a extry quart at Easter or Christmas time, as is nat'ral when we're
goin' the rounds a-singin', an' folks offer't you for nothin'; or
when I'm a-collectin' the dues; an' I like a pint wi' my pipe, an' a
neighbourly chat at Mester Casson's now an' then, for I was brought
up i' the Church, thank God, an' ha' been a parish clerk this
two-an'-thirty year: I should know what the church religion is."

"Well, what's your advice, Joshua? What do you think should be done?"

"Well, Your Reverence, I'm not for takin' any measures again' the young
woman. She's well enough if she'd let alone preachin'; an' I hear as
she's a-goin' away back to her own country soon. She's Mr. Poyser's
own niece, an' I donna wish to say what's anyways disrespectful o' th'
family at th' Hall Farm, as I've measured for shoes, little an' big,
welly iver sin' I've been a shoemaker. But there's that Will Maskery,
sir as is the rampageousest Methodis as can be, an' I make no doubt it
was him as stirred up th' young woman to preach last night, an' he'll be
a-bringin' other folks to preach from Treddles'on, if his comb isn't
cut a bit; an' I think as he should be let know as he isna t' have the
makin' an' mendin' o' church carts an' implemen's, let alone stayin' i'
that house an' yard as is Squire Donnithorne's."

"Well, but you say yourself, Joshua, that you never knew any one come to
preach on the Green before; why should you think they'll come again? The
Methodists don't come to preach in little villages like Hayslope, where
there's only a handful of labourers, too tired to listen to them. They
might almost as well go and preach on the Binton Hills. Will Maskery is
no preacher himself, I think."

"Nay, sir, he's no gift at stringin' the words together wi'out book;
he'd be stuck fast like a cow i' wet clay. But he's got tongue enough
to speak disrespectful about's neebors, for he said as I was a blind
Pharisee--a-usin' the Bible i' that way to find nick-names for folks as
are his elders an' betters!--and what's worse, he's been heard to say
very unbecomin' words about Your Reverence; for I could bring them as
'ud swear as he called you a 'dumb dog,' an' a 'idle shepherd.' You'll
forgi'e me for sayin' such things over again."

"Better not, better not, Joshua. Let evil words die as soon as they're
spoken. Will Maskery might be a great deal worse fellow than he is. He
used to be a wild drunken rascal, neglecting his work and beating his
wife, they told me; now he's thrifty and decent, and he and his wife
look comfortable together. If you can bring me any proof that he
interferes with his neighbours and creates any disturbance, I shall
think it my duty as a clergyman and a magistrate to interfere. But it
wouldn't become wise people like you and me to be making a fuss about
trifles, as if we thought the Church was in danger because Will Maskery
lets his tongue wag rather foolishly, or a young woman talks in a
serious way to a handful of people on the Green. We must 'live and let
live,' Joshua, in religion as well as in other things. You go on doing
your duty, as parish clerk and sexton, as well as you've always done
it, and making those capital thick boots for your neighbours, and things
won't go far wrong in Hayslope, depend upon it."

"Your Reverence is very good to say so; an' I'm sensable as, you not
livin' i' the parish, there's more upo' my shoulders."

"To be sure; and you must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes
by seeming to be frightened about it for a little thing, Joshua. I shall
trust to your good sense, now to take no notice at all of what Will
Maskery says, either about you or me. You and your neighbours can go on
taking your pot of beer soberly, when you've done your day's work, like
good churchmen; and if Will Maskery doesn't like to join you, but to go
to a prayer-meeting at Treddleston instead, let him; that's no business
of yours, so long as he doesn't hinder you from doing what you like. And
as to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that,
any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about
it. Will Maskery comes to church every Sunday afternoon, and does his
wheelwright's business steadily in the weekdays, and as long as he does
that he must be let alone."

"Ah, sir, but when he comes to church, he sits an' shakes his head, an'
looks as sour an' as coxy when we're a-singin' as I should like to fetch
him a rap across the jowl--God forgi'e me--an' Mrs. Irwine, an' Your
Reverence too, for speakin' so afore you. An' he said as our Christmas
singin' was no better nor the cracklin' o' thorns under a pot."

"Well, he's got a bad ear for music, Joshua. When people have wooden
heads, you know, it can't be helped. He won't bring the other people in
Hayslope round to his opinion, while you go on singing as well as you
do."

"Yes, sir, but it turns a man's stomach t' hear the Scripture misused i'
that way. I know as much o' the words o' the Bible as he does, an' could
say the Psalms right through i' my sleep if you was to pinch me; but I
know better nor to take 'em to say my own say wi'. I might as well take
the Sacriment-cup home and use it at meals."

"That's a very sensible remark of yours, Joshua; but, as I said
before----"

While Mr. Irwine was speaking, the sound of a booted step and the clink
of a spur were heard on the stone floor of the entrance-hall, and Joshua
Rann moved hastily aside from the doorway to make room for some one who
paused there, and said, in a ringing tenor voice,

"Godson Arthur--may he come in?"

"Come in, come in, godson!" Mrs. Irwine answered, in the deep
half-masculine tone which belongs to the vigorous old woman, and there
entered a young gentleman in a riding-dress, with his right arm in
a sling; whereupon followed that pleasant confusion of laughing
interjections, and hand-shakings, and "How are you's?" mingled with
joyous short barks and wagging of tails on the part of the canine
members of the family, which tells that the visitor is on the best terms
with the visited. The young gentleman was Arthur Donnithorne, known
in Hayslope, variously, as "the young squire," "the heir," and "the
captain." He was only a captain in the Loamshire Militia, but to the
Hayslope tenants he was more intensely a captain than all the young
gentlemen of the same rank in his Majesty's regulars--he outshone them
as the planet Jupiter outshines the Milky Way. If you want to know
more particularly how he looked, call to your remembrance some
tawny-whiskered, brown-locked, clear-complexioned young Englishman
whom you have met with in a foreign town, and been proud of as a
fellow-countryman--well-washed, high-bred, white-handed, yet looking as
if he could deliver well from 'the left shoulder and floor his man: I
will not be so much of a tailor as to trouble your imagination with the
difference of costume, and insist on the striped waistcoat, long-tailed
coat, and low top-boots.

Turning round to take a chair, Captain Donnithorne said, "But don't let
me interrupt Joshua's business--he has something to say."

"Humbly begging Your Honour's pardon," said Joshua, bowing low, "there
was one thing I had to say to His Reverence as other things had drove
out o' my head."

"Out with it, Joshua, quickly!" said Mr. Irwine.

"Belike, sir, you havena heared as Thias Bede's dead--drownded this
morning, or more like overnight, i' the Willow Brook, again' the bridge
right i' front o' the house."

"Ah!" exclaimed both the gentlemen at once, as if they were a good deal
interested in the information.

"An' Seth Bede's been to me this morning to say he wished me to tell
Your Reverence as his brother Adam begged of you particular t' allow his
father's grave to be dug by the White Thorn, because his mother's set
her heart on it, on account of a dream as she had; an' they'd ha'
come theirselves to ask you, but they've so much to see after with the
crowner, an' that; an' their mother's took on so, an' wants 'em to make
sure o' the spot for fear somebody else should take it. An' if Your
Reverence sees well and good, I'll send my boy to tell 'em as soon as I
get home; an' that's why I make bold to trouble you wi' it, His Honour
being present."

"To be sure, Joshua, to be sure, they shall have it. I'll ride round to
Adam myself, and see him. Send your boy, however, to say they shall
have the grave, lest anything should happen to detain me. And now, good
morning, Joshua; go into the kitchen and have some ale."

"Poor old Thias!" said Mr. Irwine, when Joshua was gone. "I'm afraid
the drink helped the brook to drown him. I should have been glad for the
load to have been taken off my friend Adam's shoulders in a less painful
way. That fine fellow has been propping up his father from ruin for the
last five or six years."

"He's a regular trump, is Adam," said Captain Donnithorne. "When I was
a little fellow, and Adam was a strapping lad of fifteen, and taught me
carpentering, I used to think if ever I was a rich sultan, I would make
Adam my grand-vizier. And I believe now he would bear the exaltation as
well as any poor wise man in an Eastern story. If ever I live to be a
large-acred man instead of a poor devil with a mortgaged allowance of
pocket-money, I'll have Adam for my right hand. He shall manage my woods
for me, for he seems to have a better notion of those things than any
man I ever met with; and I know he would make twice the money of them
that my grandfather does, with that miserable old Satchell to manage,
who understands no more about timber than an old carp. I've mentioned
the subject to my grandfather once or twice, but for some reason or
other he has a dislike to Adam, and I can do nothing. But come, Your
Reverence, are you for a ride with me? It's splendid out of doors now.
We can go to Adam's together, if you like; but I want to call at the
Hall Farm on my way, to look at the whelps Poyser is keeping for me."

"You must stay and have lunch first, Arthur," said Mrs. Irwine. "It's
nearly two. Carroll will bring it in directly."

"I want to go to the Hall Farm too," said Mr. Irwine, "to have another
look at the little Methodist who is staying there. Joshua tells me she
was preaching on the Green last night."

"Oh, by Jove!" said Captain Donnithorne, laughing. "Why, she looks as
quiet as a mouse. There's something rather striking about her, though. I
positively felt quite bashful the first time I saw her--she was sitting
stooping over her sewing in the sunshine outside the house, when I rode
up and called out, without noticing that she was a stranger, 'Is Martin
Poyser at home?' I declare, when she got up and looked at me and just
said, 'He's in the house, I believe: I'll go and call him,' I felt
quite ashamed of having spoken so abruptly to her. She looked like St.
Catherine in a Quaker dress. It's a type of face one rarely sees among
our common people."

"I should like to see the young woman, Dauphin," said Mrs. Irwine. "Make
her come here on some pretext or other."

"I don't know how I can manage that, Mother; it will hardly do for me
to patronize a Methodist preacher, even if she would consent to be
patronized by an idle shepherd, as Will Maskery calls me. You should
have come in a little sooner, Arthur, to hear Joshua's denunciation of
his neighbour Will Maskery. The old fellow wants me to excommunicate the
wheelwright, and then deliver him over to the civil arm--that is to say,
to your grandfather--to be turned out of house and yard. If I chose to
interfere in this business, now, I might get up as pretty a story of
hatred and persecution as the Methodists need desire to publish in
the next number of their magazine. It wouldn't take me much trouble to
persuade Chad Cranage and half a dozen other bull-headed fellows that
they would be doing an acceptable service to the Church by hunting Will
Maskery out of the village with rope-ends and pitchforks; and then, when
I had furnished them with half a sovereign to get gloriously drunk after
their exertions, I should have put the climax to as pretty a farce as
any of my brother clergy have set going in their parishes for the last
thirty years."

"It is really insolent of the man, though, to call you an 'idle
shepherd' and a 'dumb dog,'" said Mrs. Irwine. "I should be inclined to
check him a little there. You are too easy-tempered, Dauphin."

"Why, Mother, you don't think it would be a good way of sustaining my
dignity to set about vindicating myself from the aspersions of Will
Maskery? Besides, I'm not so sure that they ARE aspersions. I AM a lazy
fellow, and get terribly heavy in my saddle; not to mention that I'm
always spending more than I can afford in bricks and mortar, so that
I get savage at a lame beggar when he asks me for sixpence. Those poor
lean cobblers, who think they can help to regenerate mankind by setting
out to preach in the morning twilight before they begin their day's
work, may well have a poor opinion of me. But come, let us have our
luncheon. Isn't Kate coming to lunch?"

"Miss Irwine told Bridget to take her lunch upstairs," said Carroll;
"she can't leave Miss Anne."

"Oh, very well. Tell Bridget to say I'll go up and see Miss Anne
presently. You can use your right arm quite well now, Arthur," Mr.
Irwine continued, observing that Captain Donnithorne had taken his arm
out of the sling.

"Yes, pretty well; but Godwin insists on my keeping it up constantly for
some time to come. I hope I shall be able to get away to the regiment,
though, in the beginning of August. It's a desperately dull business
being shut up at the Chase in the summer months, when one can neither
hunt nor shoot, so as to make one's self pleasantly sleepy in the
evening. However, we are to astonish the echoes on the 30th of July. My
grandfather has given me carte blanche for once, and I promise you the
entertainment shall be worthy of the occasion. The world will not see
the grand epoch of my majority twice. I think I shall have a lofty
throne for you, Godmamma, or rather two, one on the lawn and another in
the ballroom, that you may sit and look down upon us like an Olympian
goddess."

"I mean to bring out my best brocade, that I wore at your christening
twenty years ago," said Mrs. Irwine. "Ah, I think I shall see your poor
mother flitting about in her white dress, which looked to me almost like
a shroud that very day; and it WAS her shroud only three months after;
and your little cap and christening dress were buried with her too. She
had set her heart on that, sweet soul! Thank God you take after your
mother's family, Arthur. If you had been a puny, wiry, yellow baby, I
wouldn't have stood godmother to you. I should have been sure you would
turn out a Donnithorne. But you were such a broad-faced, broad-chested,
loud-screaming rascal, I knew you were every inch of you a Tradgett."

"But you might have been a little too hasty there, Mother," said Mr.
Irwine, smiling. "Don't you remember how it was with Juno's last pups?
One of them was the very image of its mother, but it had two or three
of its father's tricks notwithstanding. Nature is clever enough to cheat
even you, Mother."

"Nonsense, child! Nature never makes a ferret in the shape of a mastiff.
You'll never persuade me that I can't tell what men are by their
outsides. If I don't like a man's looks, depend upon it I shall never
like HIM. I don't want to know people that look ugly and disagreeable,
any more than I want to taste dishes that look disagreeable. If they
make me shudder at the first glance, I say, take them away. An ugly,
piggish, or fishy eye, now, makes me feel quite ill; it's like a bad
smell."

"Talking of eyes," said Captain Donnithorne, "that reminds me that I've
got a book I meant to bring you, Godmamma. It came down in a parcel from
London the other day. I know you are fond of queer, wizardlike stories.
It's a volume of poems, 'Lyrical Ballads.' Most of them seem to be
twaddling stuff, but the first is in a different style--'The Ancient
Mariner' is the title. I can hardly make head or tail of it as a story,
but it's a strange, striking thing. I'll send it over to you; and there
are some other books that you may like to see, Irwine--pamphlets about
Antinomianism and Evangelicalism, whatever they may be. I can't think
what the fellow means by sending such things to me. I've written to him
to desire that from henceforth he will send me no book or pamphlet on
anything that ends in ISM."

"Well, I don't know that I'm very fond of isms myself; but I may as well
look at the pamphlets; they let one see what is going on. I've a little
matter to attend to, Arthur," continued Mr. Irwine, rising to leave the
room, "and then I shall be ready to set out with you."

The little matter that Mr. Irwine had to attend to took him up the old
stone staircase (part of the house was very old) and made him pause
before a door at which he knocked gently. "Come in," said a woman's
voice, and he entered a room so darkened by blinds and curtains that
Miss Kate, the thin middle-aged lady standing by the bedside, would not
have had light enough for any other sort of work than the knitting which
lay on the little table near her. But at present she was doing what
required only the dimmest light--sponging the aching head that lay on
the pillow with fresh vinegar. It was a small face, that of the poor
sufferer; perhaps it had once been pretty, but now it was worn and
sallow. Miss Kate came towards her brother and whispered, "Don't speak
to her; she can't bear to be spoken to to-day." Anne's eyes were closed,
and her brow contracted as if from intense pain. Mr. Irwine went to the
bedside and took up one of the delicate hands and kissed it, a slight
pressure from the small fingers told him that it was worth-while to have
come upstairs for the sake of doing that. He lingered a moment, looking
at her, and then turned away and left the room, treading very gently--he
had taken off his boots and put on slippers before he came upstairs.
Whoever remembers how many things he has declined to do even for
himself, rather than have the trouble of putting on or taking off his
boots, will not think this last detail insignificant.

And Mr. Irwine's sisters, as any person of family within ten miles of
Broxton could have testified, were such stupid, uninteresting women!
It was quite a pity handsome, clever Mrs. Irwine should have had such
commonplace daughters. That fine old lady herself was worth driving ten
miles to see, any day; her beauty, her well-preserved faculties, and her
old-fashioned dignity made her a graceful subject for conversation in
turn with the King's health, the sweet new patterns in cotton dresses,
the news from Egypt, and Lord Dacey's lawsuit, which was fretting poor
Lady Dacey to death. But no one ever thought of mentioning the Miss
Irwines, except the poor people in Broxton village, who regarded them
as deep in the science of medicine, and spoke of them vaguely as "the
gentlefolks." If any one had asked old Job Dummilow who gave him his
flannel jacket, he would have answered, "the gentlefolks, last
winter"; and widow Steene dwelt much on the virtues of the "stuff" the
gentlefolks gave her for her cough. Under this name too, they were used
with great effect as a means of taming refractory children, so that at
the sight of poor Miss Anne's sallow face, several small urchins had a
terrified sense that she was cognizant of all their worst misdemeanours,
and knew the precise number of stones with which they had intended to
hit Farmer Britton's ducks. But for all who saw them through a
less mythical medium, the Miss Irwines were quite superfluous
existences--inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without
adequate effect. Miss Anne, indeed, if her chronic headaches could have
been accounted for by a pathetic story of disappointed love, might have
had some romantic interest attached to her: but no such story had either
been known or invented concerning her, and the general impression was
quite in accordance with the fact, that both the sisters were old maids
for the prosaic reason that they had never received an eligible offer.

Nevertheless, to speak paradoxically, the existence of insignificant
people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to
affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil
tempers from the selfish and many heroisms from the sympathetic, and,
in other ways, to play no small part in the tragedy of life. And if that
handsome, generous-blooded clergyman, the Rev. Adolphus Irwine, had not
had these two hopelessly maiden sisters, his lot would have been shaped
quite differently: he would very likely have taken a comely wife in his
youth, and now, when his hair was getting grey under the powder, would
have had tall sons and blooming daughters--such possessions, in short,
as men commonly think will repay them for all the labour they take under
the sun. As it was--having with all his three livings no more than seven
hundred a-year, and seeing no way of keeping his splendid mother and his
sickly sister, not to reckon a second sister, who was usually spoken of
without any adjective, in such ladylike ease as became their birth
and habits, and at the same time providing for a family of his own--he
remained, you see, at the age of eight-and-forty, a bachelor, not
making any merit of that renunciation, but saying laughingly, if any one
alluded to it, that he made it an excuse for many indulgences which a
wife would never have allowed him. And perhaps he was the only person in
the world who did not think his sisters uninteresting and superfluous;
for his was one of those large-hearted, sweet-blooded natures that never
know a narrow or a grudging thought; Epicurean, if you will, with no
enthusiasm, no self-scourging sense of duty; but yet, as you have seen,
of a sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying tenderness
for obscure and monotonous suffering. It was his large-hearted
indulgence that made him ignore his mother's hardness towards her
daughters, which was the more striking from its contrast with her doting
fondness towards himself; he held it no virtue to frown at irremediable
faults.

See the difference between the impression a man makes on you when you
walk by his side in familiar talk, or look at him in his home, and the
figure he makes when seen from a lofty historical level, or even in the
eyes of a critical neighbour who thinks of him as an embodied system
or opinion rather than as a man. Mr. Roe, the "travelling preacher"
stationed at Treddleston, had included Mr. Irwine in a general statement
concerning the Church clergy in the surrounding district, whom he
described as men given up to the lusts of the flesh and the pride of
life; hunting and shooting, and adorning their own houses; asking what
shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be
clothed?--careless of dispensing the bread of life to their flocks,
preaching at best but a carnal and soul-benumbing morality, and
trafficking in the souls of men by receiving money for discharging the
pastoral office in parishes where they did not so much as look on the
faces of the people more than once a-year. The ecclesiastical historian,
too, looking into parliamentary reports of that period, finds honourable
members zealous for the Church, and untainted with any sympathy for
the "tribe of canting Methodists," making statements scarcely less
melancholy than that of Mr. Roe. And it is impossible for me to say that
Mr. Irwine was altogether belied by the generic classification assigned
him. He really had no very lofty aims, no theological enthusiasm: if I
were closely questioned, I should be obliged to confess that he felt
no serious alarms about the souls of his parishioners, and would have
thought it a mere loss of time to talk in a doctrinal and awakening
manner to old "Feyther Taft," or even to Chad Cranage the blacksmith.
If he had been in the habit of speaking theoretically, he would perhaps
have said that the only healthy form religion could take in such minds
was that of certain dim but strong emotions, suffusing themselves as a
hallowing influence over the family affections and neighbourly duties.
He thought the custom of baptism more important than its doctrine, and
that the religious benefits the peasant drew from the church where his
fathers worshipped and the sacred piece of turf where they lay buried
were but slightly dependent on a clear understanding of the Liturgy or
the sermon. Clearly the rector was not what is called in these days an
"earnest" man: he was fonder of church history than of divinity, and had
much more insight into men's characters than interest in their opinions;
he was neither laborious, nor obviously self-denying, nor very copious
in alms-giving, and his theology, you perceive, was lax. His mental
palate, indeed, was rather pagan, and found a savouriness in a quotation
from Sophocles or Theocritus that was quite absent from any text in
Isaiah or Amos. But if you feed your young setter on raw flesh, how
can you wonder at its retaining a relish for uncooked partridge in
after-life? And Mr. Irwine's recollections of young enthusiasm and
ambition were all associated with poetry and ethics that lay aloof from
the Bible.

On the other hand, I must plead, for I have an affectionate partiality
towards the rector's memory, that he was not vindictive--and some
philanthropists have been so; that he was not intolerant--and there is a
rumour that some zealous theologians have not been altogether free from
that blemish; that although he would probably have declined to give his
body to be burned in any public cause, and was far from bestowing all
his goods to feed the poor, he had that charity which has sometimes
been lacking to very illustrious virtue--he was tender to other men's
failings, and unwilling to impute evil. He was one of those men,
and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by
following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit,
entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which
they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and
witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday
companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not
as a subject for panegyric.

Such men, happily, have lived in times when great abuses flourished, and
have sometimes even been the living representatives of the abuses.
That is a thought which might comfort us a little under the opposite
fact--that it is better sometimes NOT to follow great reformers of
abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.

But whatever you may think of Mr. Irwine now, if you had met him that
June afternoon riding on his grey cob, with his dogs running beside
him--portly, upright, manly, with a good-natured smile on his finely
turned lips as he talked to his dashing young companion on the bay mare,
you must have felt that, however ill he harmonized with sound theories
of the clerical office, he somehow harmonized extremely well with that
peaceful landscape.

See them in the bright sunlight, interrupted every now and then by
rolling masses of cloud, ascending the slope from the Broxton side,
where the tall gables and elms of the rectory predominate over the tiny
whitewashed church. They will soon be in the parish of Hayslope; the
grey church-tower and village roofs lie before them to the left, and
farther on, to the right, they can just see the chimneys of the Hall
Farm.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Okay, this is weird. George Eliot just killed off her main character's father. We're all in suspense, waiting, waiting like mad, when suddenly, suddenly... it's time to meet the local clergyman. Whoa, anticlimax. Eliot begins the chapter by describing the "heavy storms of rain" that break out soon after Thais Bede is found dead . Even the skies are sad. But inside his house, "Rev. Adolphus Irwine, Rector of Broxton, Vicar of Hayslope" is enjoying a game of chess with his elderly, well-preserved mother . We don't know much about Irwine yet, but we do know that he and his mum are living the good life. We also know that he's got to deal with a dude named Joshua Rann who makes "very deferential bows" . Joshua Rann: the closest thing the Church of England has to a gigantic teacher's pet. Get used to him. He's going to be here for a few pages. After delivering some run-of-the-mill news, Joshua explains that he's upset about some recent goings-on. The town has "thieves, an' a thievin' the church, too. It's the Methodisses as is like to get th' upper hand i' th' parish" . Translation: the Methodists are trying to become the #1 church in town. Joshua the Apple-Shiner starts to tattle out particular "Methodisses," such as Dinah and a craftsman named Will Maskery, "the rampageousest Methodis as can be" . But Mr. Irwine isn't ready to start a crusade--certainly not at the bidding of this guy. He reassures Joshua: "As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about it" . So out goes Joshua, and in comes our next special guest on the Parson Irwine Show. And it's none other than Arthur Donnithorne, heir to the estate that Mr. Irwine serves. Young Arthur is the kind of "dear-complexioned young Englishman whom you have met with in a foreign town, and be proud of as a fellow-countryman" . Oh yeah, and he's also suffered a riding accident. Nobody's perfect. But Arthur isn't just a fine specimen of a "dear-complexioned young Englishman." He's also the bearer of bad news. Irwine and his mother learn of Thias Bede's death from him. Irwine also returns to our earlier segment and vents a little about "Joshua's denunciation of his neighbor Will Maskery" . Totally unnecessary. But it did spice things up, didn't it? Sadly, folks, the Parson Irwine Show is going to be ending early today. Mr. Irwine has "a little matter to attend to" . Before he sets about the rest of his day, he goes to see his invalid sisters, "inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without adequate effect" . Well that sounds duller than a pile of bricks. That said, Eliot isn't condemning Irwine for indulging these dull gals. In fact, the narrator has a lot of appreciation for Irwine's "thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday companions" . He isn't a saint, but who on earth is?


prompt:
Chapter: EVIDENTLY that gate is never opened, for the long grass and the great
hemlocks grow close against it, and if it were opened, it is so rusty
that the force necessary to turn it on its hinges would be likely to
pull down the square stone-built pillars, to the detriment of the two
stone lionesses which grin with a doubtful carnivorous affability above
a coat of arms surmounting each of the pillars. It would be easy enough,
by the aid of the nicks in the stone pillars, to climb over the brick
wall with its smooth stone coping; but by putting our eyes close to the
rusty bars of the gate, we can see the house well enough, and all but
the very corners of the grassy enclosure.

It is a very fine old place, of red brick, softened by a pale powdery
lichen, which has dispersed itself with happy irregularity, so as
to bring the red brick into terms of friendly companionship with the
limestone ornaments surrounding the three gables, the windows, and the
door-place. But the windows are patched with wooden panes, and the door,
I think, is like the gate--it is never opened. How it would groan and
grate against the stone floor if it were! For it is a solid, heavy,
handsome door, and must once have been in the habit of shutting with a
sonorous bang behind a liveried lackey, who had just seen his master and
mistress off the grounds in a carriage and pair.

But at present one might fancy the house in the early stage of a
chancery suit, and that the fruit from that grand double row of
walnut-trees on the right hand of the enclosure would fall and rot among
the grass, if it were not that we heard the booming bark of dogs echoing
from great buildings at the back. And now the half-weaned calves that
have been sheltering themselves in a gorse-built hovel against the
left-hand wall come out and set up a silly answer to that terrible bark,
doubtless supposing that it has reference to buckets of milk.

Yes, the house must be inhabited, and we will see by whom; for
imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may
climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity. Put your face
to one of the glass panes in the right-hand window: what do you see? A
large open fireplace, with rusty dogs in it, and a bare boarded floor;
at the far end, fleeces of wool stacked up; in the middle of the floor,
some empty corn-bags. That is the furniture of the dining-room. And
what through the left-hand window? Several clothes-horses, a pillion,
a spinning-wheel, and an old box wide open and stuffed full of coloured
rags. At the edge of this box there lies a great wooden doll, which, so
far as mutilation is concerned, bears a strong resemblance to the finest
Greek sculpture, and especially in the total loss of its nose. Near it
there is a little chair, and the butt end of a boy's leather long-lashed
whip.

The history of the house is plain now. It was once the residence of
a country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere
spinsterhood, got merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne. It
was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some
coast town that was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the
genteel streets are silent and grass-grown, and the docks and warehouses
busy and resonant, the life at the Hall has changed its focus, and no
longer radiates from the parlour, but from the kitchen and the farmyard.

Plenty of life there, though this is the drowsiest time of the year,
just before hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest time of the day too,
for it is close upon three by the sun, and it is half-past three by Mrs.
Poyser's handsome eight-day clock. But there is always a stronger sense
of life when the sun is brilliant after rain; and now he is pouring
down his beams, and making sparkles among the wet straw, and lighting
up every patch of vivid green moss on the red tiles of the cow-shed, and
turning even the muddy water that is hurrying along the channel to the
drain into a mirror for the yellow-billed ducks, who are seizing the
opportunity of getting a drink with as much body in it as possible.
There is quite a concert of noises; the great bull-dog, chained against
the stables, is thrown into furious exasperation by the unwary approach
of a cock too near the mouth of his kennel, and sends forth a thundering
bark, which is answered by two fox-hounds shut up in the opposite
cow-house; the old top-knotted hens, scratching with their chicks among
the straw, set up a sympathetic croaking as the discomfited cock joins
them; a sow with her brood, all very muddy as to the legs, and curled as
to the tail, throws in some deep staccato notes; our friends the calves
are bleating from the home croft; and, under all, a fine ear discerns
the continuous hum of human voices.

For the great barn-doors are thrown wide open, and men are busy
there mending the harness, under the superintendence of Mr. Goby,
the "whittaw," otherwise saddler, who entertains them with the latest
Treddleston gossip. It is certainly rather an unfortunate day that
Alick, the shepherd, has chosen for having the whittaws, since the
morning turned out so wet; and Mrs. Poyser has spoken her mind pretty
strongly as to the dirt which the extra number of men's shoes brought
into the house at dinnertime. Indeed, she has not yet recovered her
equanimity on the subject, though it is now nearly three hours since
dinner, and the house-floor is perfectly clean again; as clean as
everything else in that wonderful house-place, where the only chance of
collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer,
and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering
brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time
of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or
at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you
have bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere else could an
oak clock-case and an oak table have got to such a polish by the hand:
genuine "elbow polish," as Mrs. Poyser called it, for she thanked God
she never had any of your varnished rubbish in her house. Hetty Sorrel
often took the opportunity, when her aunt's back was turned, of looking
at the pleasing reflection of herself in those polished surfaces, for
the oak table was usually turned up like a screen, and was more for
ornament than for use; and she could see herself sometimes in the great
round pewter dishes that were ranged on the shelves above the long
deal dinner-table, or in the hobs of the grate, which always shone like
jasper.

Everything was looking at its brightest at this moment, for the sun
shone right on the pewter dishes, and from their reflecting surfaces
pleasant jets of light were thrown on mellow oak and bright brass--and
on a still pleasanter object than these, for some of the rays fell on
Dinah's finely moulded cheek, and lit up her pale red hair to auburn,
as she bent over the heavy household linen which she was mending for her
aunt. No scene could have been more peaceful, if Mrs. Poyser, who was
ironing a few things that still remained from the Monday's wash, had
not been making a frequent clinking with her iron and moving to and
fro whenever she wanted it to cool; carrying the keen glance of her
blue-grey eye from the kitchen to the dairy, where Hetty was making
up the butter, and from the dairy to the back kitchen, where Nancy was
taking the pies out of the oven. Do not suppose, however, that Mrs.
Poyser was elderly or shrewish in her appearance; she was a good-looking
woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy
hair, well-shapen, light-footed. The most conspicuous article in her
attire was an ample checkered linen apron, which almost covered her
skirt; and nothing could be plainer or less noticeable than her cap
and gown, for there was no weakness of which she was less tolerant than
feminine vanity, and the preference of ornament to utility. The family
likeness between her and her niece Dinah Morris, with the contrast
between her keenness and Dinah's seraphic gentleness of expression,
might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion for a Martha and
Mary. Their eyes were just of the same colour, but a striking test of
the difference in their operation was seen in the demeanour of Trip, the
black-and-tan terrier, whenever that much-suspected dog unwarily exposed
himself to the freezing arctic ray of Mrs. Poyser's glance. Her tongue
was not less keen than her eye, and, whenever a damsel came within
earshot, seemed to take up an unfinished lecture, as a barrel-organ
takes up a tune, precisely at the point where it had left off.

The fact that it was churning day was another reason why it was
inconvenient to have the whittaws, and why, consequently, Mrs.
Poyser should scold Molly the housemaid with unusual severity. To all
appearance Molly had got through her after-dinner work in an exemplary
manner, had "cleaned herself" with great dispatch, and now came to ask,
submissively, if she should sit down to her spinning till milking time.
But this blameless conduct, according to Mrs. Poyser, shrouded a secret
indulgence of unbecoming wishes, which she now dragged forth and held up
to Molly's view with cutting eloquence.

"Spinning, indeed! It isn't spinning as you'd be at, I'll be bound, and
let you have your own way. I never knew your equals for gallowsness. To
think of a gell o' your age wanting to go and sit with half-a-dozen men!
I'd ha' been ashamed to let the words pass over my lips if I'd been you.
And you, as have been here ever since last Michaelmas, and I hired you
at Treddles'on stattits, without a bit o' character--as I say, you might
be grateful to be hired in that way to a respectable place; and you knew
no more o' what belongs to work when you come here than the mawkin i'
the field. As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I saw, you know you was.
Who taught you to scrub a floor, I should like to know? Why, you'd leave
the dirt in heaps i' the corners--anybody 'ud think you'd never been
brought up among Christians. And as for spinning, why, you've wasted
as much as your wage i' the flax you've spoiled learning to spin.
And you've a right to feel that, and not to go about as gaping and as
thoughtless as if you was beholding to nobody. Comb the wool for the
whittaws, indeed! That's what you'd like to be doing, is it? That's the
way with you--that's the road you'd all like to go, headlongs to ruin.
You're never easy till you've got some sweetheart as is as big a fool as
yourself: you think you'll be finely off when you're married, I daresay,
and have got a three-legged stool to sit on, and never a blanket to
cover you, and a bit o' oat-cake for your dinner, as three children are
a-snatching at."

"I'm sure I donna want t' go wi' the whittaws," said Molly, whimpering,
and quite overcome by this Dantean picture of her future, "on'y we
allays used to comb the wool for 'n at Mester Ottley's; an' so I just
axed ye. I donna want to set eyes on the whittaws again; I wish I may
never stir if I do."

"Mr. Ottley's, indeed! It's fine talking o' what you did at Mr.
Ottley's. Your missis there might like her floors dirted wi' whittaws
for what I know. There's no knowing what people WONNA like--such ways as
I've heard of! I never had a gell come into my house as seemed to know
what cleaning was; I think people live like pigs, for my part. And as to
that Betty as was dairymaid at Trent's before she come to me, she'd ha'
left the cheeses without turning from week's end to week's end, and the
dairy thralls, I might ha' wrote my name on 'em, when I come downstairs
after my illness, as the doctor said it was inflammation--it was a mercy
I got well of it. And to think o' your knowing no better, Molly, and
been here a-going i' nine months, and not for want o' talking to,
neither--and what are you stanning there for, like a jack as is run
down, instead o' getting your wheel out? You're a rare un for sitting
down to your work a little while after it's time to put by."

"Munny, my iron's twite told; pease put it down to warm."

The small chirruping voice that uttered this request came from a little
sunny-haired girl between three and four, who, seated on a high chair
at the end of the ironing table, was arduously clutching the handle of
a miniature iron with her tiny fat fist, and ironing rags with an
assiduity that required her to put her little red tongue out as far as
anatomy would allow.

"Cold, is it, my darling? Bless your sweet face!" said Mrs. Poyser, who
was remarkable for the facility with which she could relapse from her
official objurgatory to one of fondness or of friendly converse. "Never
mind! Mother's done her ironing now. She's going to put the ironing
things away."

"Munny, I tould 'ike to do into de barn to Tommy, to see de whittawd."

"No, no, no; Totty 'ud get her feet wet," said Mrs. Poyser, carrying
away her iron. "Run into the dairy and see cousin Hetty make the
butter."

"I tould 'ike a bit o' pum-take," rejoined Totty, who seemed to be
provided with several relays of requests; at the same time, taking the
opportunity of her momentary leisure to put her fingers into a bowl
of starch, and drag it down so as to empty the contents with tolerable
completeness on to the ironing sheet.

"Did ever anybody see the like?" screamed Mrs. Poyser, running towards
the table when her eye had fallen on the blue stream. "The child's
allays i' mischief if your back's turned a minute. What shall I do to
you, you naughty, naughty gell?"

Totty, however, had descended from her chair with great swiftness, and
was already in retreat towards the dairy with a sort of waddling run,
and an amount of fat on the nape of her neck which made her look like
the metamorphosis of a white suckling pig.

The starch having been wiped up by Molly's help, and the ironing
apparatus put by, Mrs. Poyser took up her knitting which always lay
ready at hand, and was the work she liked best, because she could carry
it on automatically as she walked to and fro. But now she came and sat
down opposite Dinah, whom she looked at in a meditative way, as she
knitted her grey worsted stocking.

"You look th' image o' your Aunt Judith, Dinah, when you sit a-sewing. I
could almost fancy it was thirty years back, and I was a little gell
at home, looking at Judith as she sat at her work, after she'd done
the house up; only it was a little cottage, Father's was, and not a big
rambling house as gets dirty i' one corner as fast as you clean it in
another--but for all that, I could fancy you was your Aunt Judith, only
her hair was a deal darker than yours, and she was stouter and broader
i' the shoulders. Judith and me allays hung together, though she had
such queer ways, but your mother and her never could agree. Ah, your
mother little thought as she'd have a daughter just cut out after the
very pattern o' Judith, and leave her an orphan, too, for Judith to
take care on, and bring up with a spoon when SHE was in the graveyard at
Stoniton. I allays said that o' Judith, as she'd bear a pound weight
any day to save anybody else carrying a ounce. And she was just the same
from the first o' my remembering her; it made no difference in her, as
I could see, when she took to the Methodists, only she talked a bit
different and wore a different sort o' cap; but she'd never in her life
spent a penny on herself more than keeping herself decent."

"She was a blessed woman," said Dinah; "God had given her a loving,
self-forgetting nature, and He perfected it by grace. And she was very
fond of you too, Aunt Rachel. I often heard her talk of you in the same
sort of way. When she had that bad illness, and I was only eleven
years old, she used to say, 'You'll have a friend on earth in your Aunt
Rachel, if I'm taken from you, for she has a kind heart,' and I'm sure
I've found it so."

"I don't know how, child; anybody 'ud be cunning to do anything for you,
I think; you're like the birds o' th' air, and live nobody knows how.
I'd ha' been glad to behave to you like a mother's sister, if you'd come
and live i' this country where there's some shelter and victual for
man and beast, and folks don't live on the naked hills, like poultry
a-scratching on a gravel bank. And then you might get married to some
decent man, and there'd be plenty ready to have you, if you'd only leave
off that preaching, as is ten times worse than anything your Aunt Judith
ever did. And even if you'd marry Seth Bede, as is a poor wool-gathering
Methodist and's never like to have a penny beforehand, I know your
uncle 'ud help you with a pig, and very like a cow, for he's allays been
good-natur'd to my kin, for all they're poor, and made 'em welcome to
the house; and 'ud do for you, I'll be bound, as much as ever he'd do
for Hetty, though she's his own niece. And there's linen in the house
as I could well spare you, for I've got lots o' sheeting and
table-clothing, and towelling, as isn't made up. There's a piece o'
sheeting I could give you as that squinting Kitty spun--she was a rare
girl to spin, for all she squinted, and the children couldn't abide her;
and, you know, the spinning's going on constant, and there's new linen
wove twice as fast as the old wears out. But where's the use o' talking,
if ye wonna be persuaded, and settle down like any other woman in her
senses, i'stead o' wearing yourself out with walking and preaching,
and giving away every penny you get, so as you've nothing saved against
sickness; and all the things you've got i' the world, I verily believe,
'ud go into a bundle no bigger nor a double cheese. And all because
you've got notions i' your head about religion more nor what's i' the
Catechism and the Prayer-book."

"But not more than what's in the Bible, Aunt," said Dinah.

"Yes, and the Bible too, for that matter," Mrs. Poyser rejoined, rather
sharply; "else why shouldn't them as know best what's in the Bible--the
parsons and people as have got nothing to do but learn it--do the same
as you do? But, for the matter o' that, if everybody was to do like
you, the world must come to a standstill; for if everybody tried to
do without house and home, and with poor eating and drinking, and was
allays talking as we must despise the things o' the world as you say, I
should like to know where the pick o' the stock, and the corn, and the
best new-milk cheeses 'ud have to go. Everybody 'ud be wanting bread
made o' tail ends and everybody 'ud be running after everybody else
to preach to 'em, istead o' bringing up their families, and laying by
against a bad harvest. It stands to sense as that can't be the right
religion."

"Nay, dear aunt, you never heard me say that all people are called to
forsake their work and their families. It's quite right the land should
be ploughed and sowed, and the precious corn stored, and the things
of this life cared for, and right that people should rejoice in their
families, and provide for them, so that this is done in the fear of the
Lord, and that they are not unmindful of the soul's wants while they are
caring for the body. We can all be servants of God wherever our lot is
cast, but He gives us different sorts of work, according as He fits us
for it and calls us to it. I can no more help spending my life in trying
to do what I can for the souls of others, than you could help running if
you heard little Totty crying at the other end of the house; the voice
would go to your heart, you would think the dear child was in trouble or
in danger, and you couldn't rest without running to help her and comfort
her."

"Ah," said Mrs. Poyser, rising and walking towards the door, "I know it
'ud be just the same if I was to talk to you for hours. You'd make me
the same answer, at th' end. I might as well talk to the running brook
and tell it to stan' still."

The causeway outside the kitchen door was dry enough now for Mrs. Poyser
to stand there quite pleasantly and see what was going on in the yard,
the grey worsted stocking making a steady progress in her hands all the
while. But she had not been standing there more than five minutes before
she came in again, and said to Dinah, in rather a flurried, awe-stricken
tone, "If there isn't Captain Donnithorne and Mr. Irwine a-coming into
the yard! I'll lay my life they're come to speak about your preaching
on the Green, Dinah; it's you must answer 'em, for I'm dumb. I've said
enough a'ready about your bringing such disgrace upo' your uncle's
family. I wouldn't ha' minded if you'd been Mr. Poyser's own
niece--folks must put up wi' their own kin, as they put up wi' their own
noses--it's their own flesh and blood. But to think of a niece o' mine
being cause o' my husband's being turned out of his farm, and me brought
him no fortin but my savin's----"

"Nay, dear Aunt Rachel," said Dinah gently, "you've no cause for such
fears. I've strong assurance that no evil will happen to you and my
uncle and the children from anything I've done. I didn't preach without
direction."

"Direction! I know very well what you mean by direction," said Mrs.
Poyser, knitting in a rapid and agitated manner. "When there's a bigger
maggot than usual in your head you call it 'direction'; and then nothing
can stir you--you look like the statty o' the outside o' Treddles'on
church, a-starin' and a-smilin' whether it's fair weather or foul. I
hanna common patience with you."

By this time the two gentlemen had reached the palings and had got
down from their horses: it was plain they meant to come in. Mrs. Poyser
advanced to the door to meet them, curtsying low and trembling between
anger with Dinah and anxiety to conduct herself with perfect propriety
on the occasion. For in those days the keenest of bucolic minds felt a
whispering awe at the sight of the gentry, such as of old men felt when
they stood on tiptoe to watch the gods passing by in tall human shape.

"Well, Mrs. Poyser, how are you after this stormy morning?" said Mr.
Irwine, with his stately cordiality. "Our feet are quite dry; we shall
not soil your beautiful floor."

"Oh, sir, don't mention it," said Mrs. Poyser. "Will you and the captain
please to walk into the parlour?"

"No, indeed, thank you, Mrs. Poyser," said the captain, looking eagerly
round the kitchen, as if his eye were seeking something it could not
find. "I delight in your kitchen. I think it is the most charming room
I know. I should like every farmer's wife to come and look at it for a
pattern."

"Oh, you're pleased to say so, sir. Pray take a seat," said Mrs.
Poyser, relieved a little by this compliment and the captain's evident
good-humour, but still glancing anxiously at Mr. Irwine, who, she saw,
was looking at Dinah and advancing towards her.

"Poyser is not at home, is he?" said Captain Donnithorne, seating
himself where he could see along the short passage to the open
dairy-door.

"No, sir, he isn't; he's gone to Rosseter to see Mr. West, the factor,
about the wool. But there's Father i' the barn, sir, if he'd be of any
use."

"No, thank you; I'll just look at the whelps and leave a message about
them with your shepherd. I must come another day and see your husband; I
want to have a consultation with him about horses. Do you know when he's
likely to be at liberty?"

"Why, sir, you can hardly miss him, except it's o' Treddles'on
market-day--that's of a Friday, you know. For if he's anywhere on the
farm we can send for him in a minute. If we'd got rid o' the Scantlands,
we should have no outlying fields; and I should be glad of it, for if
ever anything happens, he's sure to be gone to the Scantlands. Things
allays happen so contrairy, if they've a chance; and it's an unnat'ral
thing to have one bit o' your farm in one county and all the rest in
another."

"Ah, the Scantlands would go much better with Choyce's farm, especially
as he wants dairyland and you've got plenty. I think yours is the
prettiest farm on the estate, though; and do you know, Mrs. Poyser, if I
were going to marry and settle, I should be tempted to turn you out, and
do up this fine old house, and turn farmer myself."

"Oh, sir," said Mrs. Poyser, rather alarmed, "you wouldn't like it at
all. As for farming, it's putting money into your pocket wi' your
right hand and fetching it out wi' your left. As fur as I can see, it's
raising victual for other folks and just getting a mouthful for yourself
and your children as you go along. Not as you'd be like a poor man as
wants to get his bread--you could afford to lose as much money as you
liked i' farming--but it's poor fun losing money, I should think, though
I understan' it's what the great folks i' London play at more than
anything. For my husband heard at market as Lord Dacey's eldest son had
lost thousands upo' thousands to the Prince o' Wales, and they said
my lady was going to pawn her jewels to pay for him. But you know more
about that than I do, sir. But, as for farming, sir, I canna think as
you'd like it; and this house--the draughts in it are enough to cut you
through, and it's my opinion the floors upstairs are very rotten, and
the rats i' the cellar are beyond anything."

"Why, that's a terrible picture, Mrs. Poyser. I think I should be doing
you a service to turn you out of such a place. But there's no chance
of that. I'm not likely to settle for the next twenty years, till I'm a
stout gentleman of forty; and my grandfather would never consent to part
with such good tenants as you."

"Well, sir, if he thinks so well o' Mr. Poyser for a tenant I wish you
could put in a word for him to allow us some new gates for the Five
closes, for my husband's been asking and asking till he's tired, and to
think o' what he's done for the farm, and's never had a penny allowed
him, be the times bad or good. And as I've said to my husband often and
often, I'm sure if the captain had anything to do with it, it wouldn't
be so. Not as I wish to speak disrespectful o' them as have got the
power i' their hands, but it's more than flesh and blood 'ull bear
sometimes, to be toiling and striving, and up early and down late, and
hardly sleeping a wink when you lie down for thinking as the cheese
may swell, or the cows may slip their calf, or the wheat may grow green
again i' the sheaf--and after all, at th' end o' the year, it's like
as if you'd been cooking a feast and had got the smell of it for your
pains."

Mrs. Poyser, once launched into conversation, always sailed along
without any check from her preliminary awe of the gentry. The confidence
she felt in her own powers of exposition was a motive force that
overcame all resistance.

"I'm afraid I should only do harm instead of good, if I were to speak
about the gates, Mrs. Poyser," said the captain, "though I assure you
there's no man on the estate I would sooner say a word for than your
husband. I know his farm is in better order than any other within
ten miles of us; and as for the kitchen," he added, smiling, "I don't
believe there's one in the kingdom to beat it. By the by, I've never
seen your dairy: I must see your dairy, Mrs. Poyser."

"Indeed, sir, it's not fit for you to go in, for Hetty's in the middle
o' making the butter, for the churning was thrown late, and I'm quite
ashamed." This Mrs. Poyser said blushing, and believing that the captain
was really interested in her milk-pans, and would adjust his opinion of
her to the appearance of her dairy.

"Oh, I've no doubt it's in capital order. Take me in," said the captain,
himself leading the way, while Mrs. Poyser followed.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Please George, let us settle down a bit. Can we spend a little more time in Irwine's nice house? Nope: have to relocate yet again. New chapter, new location. And this time it's a grassy, mossy, picturesque corner of Hayslope known as The Hall Farm. Oh yeah, and like a gazillion of the book's most important characters live there. "Once the residence of a country squire," the farm is now the residence of, well, a whole bunch of people . We're introduced to some of the servants and other help, then meet the lady of the house, Mrs. Poyser, a "good-looking woman, not more than eight and thirty" . She's also a taskmaster, a tough customer, a non-nonsense type. It's a splendid sunny day. Mrs. Poyser is doing her ironing and Dinah is mending some clothes. For Mrs. Poyser, "doing her ironing" apparently means "being distracted every five seconds." Most distracting of all is Mrs. Poyser's daughter Totty, a mischievous "little sunny-haired girl between three and four" . As far as we can tell, Mrs. Poyser likes 1) Totty and 2) Dinah. There is no 3). As for Dinah, Mrs. Poyser doesn't approve of her Methodism, but does approve of her hard work and family values. She thinks Dinah should find a nice man and settle down. Dinah isn't going to abandon her principles any time soon. She is doing the work God has called her to do, after all. But what's that going on outside? A revelation? The Second Coming? No, it's just Mr. Irwine and Squire Donnithorne, coming for a visit. What a letdown. A letdown for us. For them, it's going to be a pleasant tour of the farm. Arthur wants to see Mrs. Poyser's famous dairy, and the good woman can't help obliging.


prompt:
Chapter: THE dairy was certainly worth looking at: it was a scene to sicken for
with a sort of calenture in hot and dusty streets--such coolness, such
purity, such fresh fragrance of new-pressed cheese, of firm butter, of
wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure water; such soft colouring of
red earthenware and creamy surfaces, brown wood and polished tin, grey
limestone and rich orange-red rust on the iron weights and hooks and
hinges. But one gets only a confused notion of these details when they
surround a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen, standing on little
pattens and rounding her dimpled arm to lift a pound of butter out of
the scale.

Hetty blushed a deep rose-colour when Captain Donnithorne entered the
dairy and spoke to her; but it was not at all a distressed blush, for
it was inwreathed with smiles and dimples, and with sparkles from under
long, curled, dark eyelashes; and while her aunt was discoursing to him
about the limited amount of milk that was to be spared for butter and
cheese so long as the calves were not all weaned, and a large quantity
but inferior quality of milk yielded by the shorthorn, which had
been bought on experiment, together with other matters which must be
interesting to a young gentleman who would one day be a landlord, Hetty
tossed and patted her pound of butter with quite a self-possessed,
coquettish air, slyly conscious that no turn of her head was lost.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of
themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but
there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only
of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty
like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling
noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and
to engage in conscious mischief--a beauty with which you can never be
angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the
state of mind into which it throws you. Hetty Sorrel's was that sort
of beauty. Her aunt, Mrs. Poyser, who professed to despise all personal
attractions and intended to be the severest of mentors, continually
gazed at Hetty's charms by the sly, fascinated in spite of herself; and
after administering such a scolding as naturally flowed from her anxiety
to do well by her husband's niece--who had no mother of her own to scold
her, poor thing!--she would often confess to her husband, when they were
safe out of hearing, that she firmly believed, "the naughtier the little
huzzy behaved, the prettier she looked."

It is of little use for me to tell you that Hetty's cheek was like a
rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large
dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her
curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap while she was at
work, stole back in dark delicate rings on her forehead, and about her
white shell-like ears; it is of little use for me to say how lovely
was the contour of her pink-and-white neckerchief, tucked into her low
plum-coloured stuff bodice, or how the linen butter-making apron, with
its bib, seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it
fell in such charming lines, or how her brown stockings and thick-soled
buckled shoes lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have
had when empty of her foot and ankle--of little use, unless you have
seen a woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for
otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she
would not in the least resemble that distracting kittenlike maiden. I
might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring day, but if you
had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your eyes
after the mounting lark, or in wandering through the still lanes when
the fresh-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred silent beauty like
that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive
catalogue? I could never make you know what I meant by a bright spring
day. Hetty's was a spring-tide beauty; it was the beauty of young
frisking things, round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a
false air of innocence--the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for
example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you
a severe steeplechase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in
the middle of a bog.

And they are the prettiest attitudes and movements into which a pretty
girl is thrown in making up butter--tossing movements that give a
charming curve to the arm, and a sideward inclination of the round white
neck; little patting and rolling movements with the palm of the hand,
and nice adaptations and finishings which cannot at all be effected
without a great play of the pouting mouth and the dark eyes. And then
the butter itself seems to communicate a fresh charm--it is so pure,
so sweet-scented; it is turned off the mould with such a beautiful
firm surface, like marble in a pale yellow light! Moreover, Hetty was
particularly clever at making up the butter; it was the one performance
of hers that her aunt allowed to pass without severe criticism; so she
handled it with all the grace that belongs to mastery.

"I hope you will be ready for a great holiday on the thirtieth of July,
Mrs. Poyser," said Captain Donnithorne, when he had sufficiently admired
the dairy and given several improvised opinions on Swede turnips and
shorthorns. "You know what is to happen then, and I shall expect you
to be one of the guests who come earliest and leave latest. Will you
promise me your hand for two dances, Miss Hetty? If I don't get your
promise now, I know I shall hardly have a chance, for all the smart
young farmers will take care to secure you."

Hetty smiled and blushed, but before she could answer, Mrs. Poyser
interposed, scandalized at the mere suggestion that the young squire
could be excluded by any meaner partners.

"Indeed, sir, you are very kind to take that notice of her. And I'm
sure, whenever you're pleased to dance with her, she'll be proud and
thankful, if she stood still all the rest o' th' evening."

"Oh no, no, that would be too cruel to all the other young fellows who
can dance. But you will promise me two dances, won't you?" the captain
continued, determined to make Hetty look at him and speak to him.

Hetty dropped the prettiest little curtsy, and stole a half-shy,
half-coquettish glance at him as she said, "Yes, thank you, sir."

"And you must bring all your children, you know, Mrs. Poyser; your
little Totty, as well as the boys. I want all the youngest children on
the estate to be there--all those who will be fine young men and women
when I'm a bald old fellow."

"Oh dear, sir, that 'ull be a long time first," said Mrs. Poyser, quite
overcome at the young squire's speaking so lightly of himself, and
thinking how her husband would be interested in hearing her recount this
remarkable specimen of high-born humour. The captain was thought to
be "very full of his jokes," and was a great favourite throughout the
estate on account of his free manners. Every tenant was quite sure
things would be different when the reins got into his hands--there
was to be a millennial abundance of new gates, allowances of lime, and
returns of ten per cent.

"But where is Totty to-day?" he said. "I want to see her."

"Where IS the little un, Hetty?" said Mrs. Poyser. "She came in here not
long ago."

"I don't know. She went into the brewhouse to Nancy, I think."

The proud mother, unable to resist the temptation to show her Totty,
passed at once into the back kitchen, in search of her, not, however,
without misgivings lest something should have happened to render her
person and attire unfit for presentation.

"And do you carry the butter to market when you've made it?" said the
Captain to Hetty, meanwhile.

"Oh no, sir; not when it's so heavy. I'm not strong enough to carry it.
Alick takes it on horseback."

"No, I'm sure your pretty arms were never meant for such heavy weights.
But you go out a walk sometimes these pleasant evenings, don't you?
Why don't you have a walk in the Chase sometimes, now it's so green and
pleasant? I hardly ever see you anywhere except at home and at church."

"Aunt doesn't like me to go a-walking only when I'm going somewhere,"
said Hetty. "But I go through the Chase sometimes."

"And don't you ever go to see Mrs. Best, the housekeeper? I think I saw
you once in the housekeeper's room."

"It isn't Mrs. Best, it's Mrs. Pomfret, the lady's maid, as I go to see.
She's teaching me tent-stitch and the lace-mending. I'm going to tea
with her to-morrow afternoon."

The reason why there had been space for this tete-a-tete can only be
known by looking into the back kitchen, where Totty had been discovered
rubbing a stray blue-bag against her nose, and in the same moment
allowing some liberal indigo drops to fall on her afternoon pinafore.
But now she appeared holding her mother's hand--the end of her round
nose rather shiny from a recent and hurried application of soap and
water.

"Here she is!" said the captain, lifting her up and setting her on the
low stone shelf. "Here's Totty! By the by, what's her other name? She
wasn't christened Totty."

"Oh, sir, we call her sadly out of her name. Charlotte's her christened
name. It's a name i' Mr. Poyser's family: his grandmother was named
Charlotte. But we began with calling her Lotty, and now it's got to
Totty. To be sure it's more like a name for a dog than a Christian
child."

"Totty's a capital name. Why, she looks like a Totty. Has she got a
pocket on?" said the captain, feeling in his own waistcoat pockets.

Totty immediately with great gravity lifted up her frock, and showed a
tiny pink pocket at present in a state of collapse.

"It dot notin' in it," she said, as she looked down at it very
earnestly.

"No! What a pity! Such a pretty pocket. Well, I think I've got some
things in mine that will make a pretty jingle in it. Yes! I declare I've
got five little round silver things, and hear what a pretty noise they
make in Totty's pink pocket." Here he shook the pocket with the five
sixpences in it, and Totty showed her teeth and wrinkled her nose in
great glee; but, divining that there was nothing more to be got by
staying, she jumped off the shelf and ran away to jingle her pocket in
the hearing of Nancy, while her mother called after her, "Oh for shame,
you naughty gell! Not to thank the captain for what he's given you I'm
sure, sir, it's very kind of you; but she's spoiled shameful; her father
won't have her said nay in anything, and there's no managing her. It's
being the youngest, and th' only gell."

"Oh, she's a funny little fatty; I wouldn't have her different. But I
must be going now, for I suppose the rector is waiting for me."

With a "good-bye," a bright glance, and a bow to Hetty Arthur left the
dairy. But he was mistaken in imagining himself waited for. The rector
had been so much interested in his conversation with Dinah that he would
not have chosen to close it earlier; and you shall hear now what they
had been saying to each other.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: "The dairy was certainly worth looking at" is how this chapter begins . Well, that had better be the case. Why else would it get a whole chapter? Yet Arthur, and Eliot, quickly abandon "the dairy" to stare at its pretty dairymaid. Hetty blushes deeply when handsome Arthur Donnithorne appears. Hetty is a babe. Even while she's at work, there's something splendid about her appearance, since "they are the prettiest attitudes and movements into which a pretty girl is thrown in making up butter" . As Arthur looks on at Hetty, he makes her promise him a dance or two at his upcoming birthday feast. All in the presence of Mrs. Poyser, of course. And, of course, with some polite line about how "you must bring all your children, you know, Mrs. Poyser" . Or is he just being polite? Arthur wants to say hello to little Totty . Mrs. Poyser goes to fetch her darling. Arthur and Hetty exchange some small talk about shipping the butter to market. Mrs. Poyser comes back with Totty. More pleasantries, more small talk, Totty shows Arthur the "tiny pink pocket" on her frock , which is, believe it or not, not a euphemism.