prompt:
Chapter: ADAM came back from his work in the empty waggon--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 thee got thy Sunday cloose on for?" said Lisbeth complainingly,
as he came downstairs. "Thee artna goin' to th' school i' thy best
coat?"

"No, Mother," said Adam, quietly. "I'm going to the Hall Farm, but
mayhap I may go to the school after, so thee mustna wonder if I'm a
bit late. Seth 'ull be at home in half an hour--he's only gone to the
village; so thee wutna mind."

"Eh, an' what's thee got thy best cloose on for to go to th' Hall Farm?
The Poyser folks see'd thee in 'em yesterday, I warrand. What dost mean
by turnin' worki'day into Sunday a-that'n? It's poor keepin' company wi'
folks as donna like to see thee i' thy workin' jacket."

"Good-bye, mother, I can't stay," said Adam, 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 Hetty'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 half-way down to the brook, and said,
"Nay, my lad, thee wutna go away angered wi' thy mother, an' her got
nought to do but to sit by hersen an' 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,
thee'dst 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's father and mother, and
thee oughtna to want to rule over me body and soul. And thee must make
up thy mind as I'll not give way to thee where I've a right to do what I
like. So let us have no more words about it."

"Eh," said Lisbeth, not willing to show that she felt the real bearing
of Adam's words, "and' who likes to see thee i' thy best cloose better
nor thy mother? An' when thee'st got thy face washed as clean as
the smooth white pibble, an' thy hair combed so nice, and thy eyes
a-sparklin'--what else is there as thy old mother should like to look at
half so well? An' thee sha't put on thy Sunday cloose when thee lik'st
for me--I'll ne'er plague thee no moor about'n."

"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.
Lisbeth stood still on the spot, shading 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 words, and, as she lost sight of him and turned
back slowly into the house, she said aloud to herself--for it was her
way to speak her thoughts aloud in the long days when her husband and
sons were at their work--"Eh, he'll be tellin' me as he's goin' to bring
her home one o' these days; an' she'll be missis o'er me, and I mun
look on, belike, while she uses the blue-edged platters, and breaks
'em, mayhap, though there's ne'er been one broke sin' my old man an' me
bought 'em at the fair twenty 'ear come next Whissuntide. Eh!" she went
on, still louder, as she caught up her knitting from the table, "but
she'll ne'er knit the lad's stockin's, nor foot 'em nayther, while I
live; an' when I'm gone, he'll bethink him as nobody 'ull ne'er fit's
leg an' foot as his old mother did. She'll know nothin' o' narrowin' an'
heelin', I warrand, an' she'll make a long toe as he canna get's boot
on. That's what comes o' marr'in' young wenches. I war gone thirty, an'
th' feyther too, afore we war married; an' young enough too. She'll be
a poor dratchell by then SHE'S thirty, a-marr'in' a-that'n, afore her
teeth's all come."

Adam walked so fast that he was at the yard-gate before seven. Martin
Poyser and the grandfather were not yet come in from the meadow: every
one was in the meadow, even to the black-and-tan terrier--no one
kept watch in the yard but the bull-dog; and when Adam reached the
house-door, which stood wide open, he saw there was no one in the bright
clean house-place. But he guessed where Mrs. Poyser and some one else
would be, quite within hearing; so he knocked on the door and said in
his strong voice, "Mrs. Poyser within?"

"Come in, Mr. Bede, come in," Mrs. Poyser 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 canna justly leave the
cheese."

Adam walked into the dairy, where Mrs. Poyser and Nancy were crushing
the first evening cheese.

"Why, you might think you war come to a dead-house," said Mrs. Poyser,
as he stood in the open doorway; "they're all i' the meadow; but
Martin's sure to be in afore long, for they're leaving the hay cocked
to-night, ready for carrying first thing to-morrow. I've been forced
t' have Nancy in, upo' 'count as Hetty must gether the red currants
to-night; the fruit allays ripens so contrairy, just when every hand's
wanted. An' there's no trustin' the children to gether it, for they put
more into their own mouths nor into the basket; you might as well set
the wasps to gether the fruit."

Adam longed to say he would go into the garden till Mr. Poyser came in,
but he was not quite courageous enough, so he said, "I could be looking
at your spinning-wheel, then, and see what wants doing to it. Perhaps it
stands in the house, where I can find it?"

"No, I've put it away in the right-hand parlour; but let it be till
I can fetch it and show it you. I'd be glad now if you'd go into the
garden and tell Hetty to send Totty in. The child 'ull run in if she's
told, an' I know Hetty's lettin' her eat too many currants. I'll be much
obliged to you, Mr. Bede, if you'll go and send her in; an' there's the
York and Lankester roses beautiful in the garden now--you'll like to see
'em. But you'd like a drink o' whey first, p'r'aps; I know you're fond
o' whey, as most folks is when they hanna got to crush it out."

"Thank you, Mrs. Poyser," said Adam; "a drink o' whey's allays a treat
to me. I'd rather have it than beer any day."

"Aye, aye," said Mrs. Poyser, reaching a small white basin that stood on
the shelf, and dipping it into the whey-tub, "the smell o' bread's
sweet t' everybody but the baker. The Miss Irwines allays say, 'Oh, Mrs.
Poyser, I envy you your dairy; and I envy you your chickens; and what
a beautiful thing a farm-house is, to be sure!' An' I say, 'Yes; a
farm-house is a fine thing for them as look on, an' don't know the
liftin', an' the stannin', an' the worritin' o' th' inside as belongs
to't.'"

"Why, Mrs. Poyser, you wouldn't like to live anywhere else but in a
farm-house, so well as you manage it," said Adam, taking the basin;
"and there can be nothing to look at pleasanter nor a fine milch cow,
standing up to'ts knees in pasture, and the new milk frothing in the
pail, and the fresh butter ready for market, and the calves, and the
poultry. Here's to your health, and may you allays have strength to look
after your own dairy, and set a pattern t' all the farmers' wives in the
country."

Mrs. Poyser was not to be caught in the weakness of smiling at a
compliment, but a quiet complacency over-spread her face like a stealing
sunbeam, and gave a milder glance than usual to her blue-grey eyes,
as she looked at Adam drinking the whey. Ah! I think I taste that whey
now--with a flavour so delicate that one can hardly distinguish it from
an odour, 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
Guelder roses.

"Have a little more, Mr. Bede?" said Mrs. Poyser, as Adam set down the
basin.

"No, thank you; I'll go into the garden now, and send in the little
lass."

"Aye, do; and tell her to come to her mother in the dairy."

Adam walked round by the rick-yard, 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 any one 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 syringas and Guelder 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 boughs. But what signified a barren patch or two? The
garden was so large. There was always a superfluity of broad beans--it
took nine or ten of Adam's strides to get 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 groundsel 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 dated from the union
of the houses of York and Lancaster. Adam was wise enough to choose a
compact Provence rose that peeped out half-smothered by its flaunting
scentless neighbours, 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
currant-trees, not far off from the great yew-tree arbour.

But he had not gone many steps beyond the roses, when he heard the
shaking of a bough, and a boy's voice saying, "Now, then, Totty, hold
out your pinny--there's a duck."

The voice came from the boughs 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 Totty 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 am
sorry to say, more than half the cherries that fell were hard and yellow
instead of juicy and red; but Totty spent no time in useless regrets,
and she was already sucking the third juiciest when Adam said, "There
now, Totty, you've got your cherries. Run into the house with 'em 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,
a ceremony which Totty regarded as 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, my lad, take care you're not shot for a little thieving bird,"
said Adam, as he walked on towards the currant-trees.

He could see there was a large basket at the end of the row: Hetty 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 to gather 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 some one was
near--started so violently that she dropped the basin with the currants
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. Hetty 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 Hetty seemed to feel as much as he did; "let
ME pick the currants 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.

Hetty 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 currants to get," she said; "I shall soon ha'
done now."

"I'll help you," said Adam; and he fetched the large basket, which was
nearly full of currants, and set it close to them.

Not a word more was spoken as they gathered the currants. Adam's heart
was too full to speak, and he thought Hetty 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 about her which must
surely mean love, since it was the opposite of her usual manner, which
had often impressed him as indifference. 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 after-life, 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 a 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 for ever 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 odour 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.

Hetty bending over the red bunches, the level rays piercing the screen
of apple-tree boughs, 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 Hetty? 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 forsook her cheek in the agitation of that
momentary feeling would have rushed back again at the sight of any one
else just as much as at the sight of Adam. He was not wrong in thinking
that a change had come over Hetty: 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 Hetty 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 pitiable too--that
Adam too must suffer one day.

Hetty, 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 the sweet delusion.

"That'll do," said Hetty, after a little while. "Aunt wants me to leave
some on the trees. I'll take 'em in now."

"It's very well I came to carry the basket," said Adam "for it 'ud ha'
been too heavy for your little arms."

"No; I could ha' carried it with both hands."

"Oh, I daresay," said Adam, smiling, "and been as long getting into the
house as a little ant carrying a caterpillar. Have you ever seen those
tiny fellows carrying things four times as big as themselves?"

"No," said Hetty, indifferently, not caring to know the difficulties of
ant life.

"Oh, I used to watch 'em 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, and give
you th' other arm to lean on. Won't you? Such big arms as mine were made
for little arms like yours to lean on."

Hetty smiled faintly and put her arm within his. Adam looked down at
her, but her eyes were turned dreamily towards 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 himself. "Ten
years ago, when I was a lad, I went with father 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 o' rocks till I went there."

"How long did it take to get there?"

"Why, it took us the best part o' two days' walking. But it's nothing of
a day's journey for anybody as has got a first-rate nag. The captain 'ud
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 to-morrow; he's too active to rest
long in that lonely place, all by himself, for there's nothing but a
bit of a inn i' that part where he's gone to fish. I wish he'd got th'
estate in his hands; that 'ud be the right thing for him, for it 'ud
give him plenty to do, and he'd do't well too, for all he's so young;
he's got better notions o' things than many a man twice his age. He
spoke very handsome to me th' other day about lending me money to set up
i' business; and if things came round that way, I'd rather be beholding
to him nor to any man i' the world."

Poor Adam was led on to speak about Arthur because he thought Hetty
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 Hetty 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 didna mean to keep it myself. I think
these as are all pink, and have got a finer sort o' green leaves, are
prettier than the striped uns, don't you?"

He set down the basket and took the rose from his button-hole.

"It smells very sweet," he said; "those striped uns have no smell. Stick
it in your frock, and then you can put it in water after. It 'ud be a
pity to let it fade."

Hetty 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. Hetty'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 or feathers or gold things i' their hair,
but somehow I don't like to see 'em; they allays put me i' mind o' the
painted women outside the shows at Treddles'on 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 doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself. I'm
sure yours is."

"Oh, very well," said Hetty, with a little playful pout, taking the rose
out of her hair. "I'll put one o' 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
daresay 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 t' 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 th 'acorn-cup fits th'
acorn, and I shouldn't like to see her so well without it. But you've
got another sort o' face; I'd have you just as you are now, without
anything t' interfere with your own looks. It's like when a man's
singing a good tune--you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and
interfering wi' 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 Hetty 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, blest with the
right to call Hetty his own: he could be content with very little at
present. So he took up the basket of currants 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 Alick shut it, after
dealing out the corn; the horses were being led out to watering,
amidst much barking of all the three dogs and many "whups" from Tim the
ploughman, 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. Everybody was come back from
the meadow; and when Hetty and Adam entered the house-place, Mr. Poyser
was seated in the three-cornered chair, and the grandfather in the
large arm-chair opposite, looking on with pleasant expectation while the
supper was being laid on the oak table. Mrs. Poyser 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 Alick and his
companions; for the master and servants ate their supper not far off
each other; which was all the pleasanter, because if a remark about
to-morrow morning's work occurred to Mr. Poyser, Alick was at hand to
hear it.

"Well, Adam, I'm glad to see ye," said Mr. Poyser. "What! ye've been
helping Hetty to gether the curran's, eh? Come, sit ye down, sit ye
down. Why, it's pretty near a three-week since y' had your supper with
us; and the missis has got one of her rare stuffed chines. I'm glad
ye're come."

"Hetty," said Mrs. Poyser, 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 th' ale, for Nancy's busy
yet i' the dairy. You can see to the child. But whativer did you let her
run away from you along wi' Tommy for, and stuff herself wi' fruit as
she can't eat a bit o' good victual?"

This was said in a lower tone than usual, while her husband was talking
to Adam; for Mrs. Poyser 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 balk another of a customer.

Hetty made haste to run away upstairs, not easily finding an answer to
her aunt's question, and Mrs. Poyser went out to see after Marty and
Tommy and bring them in to supper.

Soon they were all seated--the two rosy lads, one on each side, by the
pale mother, a place being left for Hetty between Adam and her uncle.
Alick 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 finest
pineapple.

"What a time that gell is drawing th' ale, to be sure!" said Mrs.
Poyser, 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 o' them wenches: they'll set the empty kettle o' the
fire, and then come an hour after to see if the water boils."

"She's drawin' for the men too," said Mr. Poyser. "Thee shouldst ha'
told her to bring our jug up first."

"Told her?" said Mrs. Poyser. "Yes, I might spend all the wind i' my
body, an' take the bellows too, if I was to tell them gells everything
as their own sharpness wonna tell 'em. Mr. Bede, will you take some
vinegar with your lettuce? Aye you're i' the right not. It spoils the
flavour o' the chine, to my thinking. It's poor eating where the flavour
o' the meat lies i' the cruets. There's folks as make bad butter and
trusten to the salt t' hide it."

Mrs. Poyser's attention was here diverted by the appearance of Molly,
carrying a large jug, two small mugs, and four drinking-cans, all full
of ale or small beer--an interesting example of the prehensile 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 niver knew your equils--to think o' your poor mother as is
a widow, an' I took you wi' as good as no character, an' the times an'
times I've told you...."

Molly had not seen the lightning, and the thunder shook her nerves the
more for the want of that preparation. With a vague alarmed 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
cans--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 "Ello!" from Mr. Poyser,
who saw his draught of ale unpleasantly deferred.

"There you go!" resumed Mrs. Poyser, 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 'ud come, over and over
again; and there's your month's wage gone, and more, to pay for that jug
as I've had i' the house this ten year, and nothing ever happened to't
before; but the crockery you've broke sin' here in th' house you've been
'ud make a parson swear--God forgi' me for saying so--an' if it had been
boiling wort out o' the copper, it 'ud ha' been the same, and you'd ha'
been scalded and very like lamed for life, as there's no knowing but
what you will be some day if you go on; for anybody 'ud think you'd got
the St. Vitus's Dance, to see the things you've throwed down. It's
a pity but what the bits was stacked up for you to see, though it's
neither seeing nor hearing as 'ull make much odds to you--anybody 'ud
think you war case-hardened."

Poor Molly's tears were dropping fast by this time, and in her
desperation at the lively movement of the beer-stream towards Alick's
legs, she was converting her apron into a mop, while Mrs. Poyser,
opening the cupboard, turned a blighting eye upon her.

"Ah," she went on, "you'll do no good wi' crying an' 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 ha' wooden things t' handle. And here must I take
the brown-and-white jug, as it's niver been used three times this year,
and go down i' the cellar myself, and belike catch my death, and be laid
up wi' inflammation...."

Mrs. Poyser 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 for ever with its spout
and handle.

"Did ever anybody see the like?" she said, with a suddenly lowered
tone, after a moment's bewildered glance round the room. "The jugs are
bewitched, I think. It's them nasty glazed handles--they slip o'er the
finger like a snail."

"Why, thee'st let thy own whip fly i' 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," rejoined Mrs. Poyser; "but
there's times when the crockery seems alive an' flies out o' your hand
like a bird. It's like the glass, sometimes, 'ull crack as it stands.
What is to be broke WILL be broke, for I never dropped a thing i' my
life for want o' holding it, else I should never ha' kept the crockery
all these 'ears as I bought at my own wedding. And Hetty, are you mad?
Whativer do you mean by coming down i' that way, and making one think as
there's a ghost a-walking i' th' house?"

A new outbreak of laughter, while Mrs. Poyser 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's, and pinned it 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 net caps.
The thought of Dinah's pale grave 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. The boys got off their chairs and jumped round her, clapping
their hands, and even Alick gave a low ventral laugh as he looked up
from his beans. Under cover of the noise, Mrs. Poyser 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, lass, are ye turned Methodist?" said Mr. Poyser, with
that comfortable slow enjoyment of a laugh which one only sees in stout
people. "You must pull your face a deal longer before you'll do for one;
mustna 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 demurely. "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 'em, I should
ha' said nothing but what was true."

"Why, thee thought'st Hetty war a ghost, didstna?" said Mr. Poyser to
his wife, who now came back and took her seat again. "Thee look'dst as
scared as scared."

"It little sinnifies how I looked," said Mrs. Poyser; "looks 'ull mend
no jugs, nor laughing neither, as I see. Mr. Bede, I'm sorry you've to
wait so long for your ale, but it's coming in a minute. Make yourself at
home wi' th' cold potatoes: I know you like 'em. Tommy, I'll send you to
bed this minute, if you don't give over laughing. What is there to laugh
at, I should like to know? I'd sooner cry nor laugh at the sight o' that
poor thing's cap; and there's them as 'ud be better if they could make
theirselves like her i' more ways nor putting on her cap. It little
becomes anybody i' this house to make fun o' my sister's child, an' her
just gone away from us, as it went to my heart to part wi' her. An' I
know one thing, as if trouble was to come, an' I was to be laid up i'
my bed, an' the children was to die--as there's no knowing but what they
will--an' the murrain was to come among the cattle again, an' everything
went to rack an' ruin, I say we might be glad to get sight o' Dinah's
cap again, wi' her own face under it, border or no border. For she's one
o' them things as looks the brightest on a rainy day, and loves you the
best when you're most i' need on't."

Mrs. Poyser, 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 Hetty, "You'd better
take the things off again, my lass; it hurts your aunt to see 'em."

Hetty 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. Poyser; 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. Poyser 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. Poyser's pipe alight she was once more in high good
humour, 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 o' turning
wanted. It's a pretty wheel. I must have it up at the turning-shop in
the village and do it there, for I've no convenence for turning at home.
If you'll send it to Mr. Burge's shop i' 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. Poyser, "to make a bit more convenence at home
for nice jobs o' 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 'em. I look for me and Seth to get a little
business for ourselves i' that way, for I know a man at Rosseter as 'ull
take as many things as we should make, besides what we could get orders
for round about."

Mr. Poyser entered with interest into a project which seemed a step
towards Adam's becoming a "master-man," and Mrs. Poyser 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. Hetty, once more in her own
dress, with her neckerchief pushed a little backwards on this warm
evening, was seated picking currants 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 Mester
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."

"Aye," said Mr. Poyser, "we've heared nothing about him, for it's the
boys' hollodays now, so we can give you no account."

"But you'll niver think o' going there at this hour o' the night?" said
Mrs. Poyser, folding up her knitting.

"Oh, Mester Massey sits up late," said Adam. "An' the night-school's not
over yet. Some o' 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 wouldna have him to live wi' me, then," said Mrs. Poyser, "a-dropping
candle-grease about, as you're like to tumble down o' the floor the
first thing i' the morning."

"Aye, eleven o'clock's late--it's late," said old Martin. "I ne'er sot
up so i' MY life, not to say as it warna a marr'in', or a christenin',
or a wake, or th' harvest supper. Eleven o'clock's late."

"Why, I sit up till after twelve often," said Adam, laughing, "but
it isn't t' eat and drink extry, it's to work extry. Good-night, Mrs.
Poyser; good-night, Hetty."

Hetty could only smile and not shake hands, for hers were dyed and damp
with currant-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!"

"Aye, think o' that now," said Mr. Poyser, when Adam was out of on the
causeway. "Sitting up till past twelve to do extry work! Ye'll not find
many men o' six-an' twenty as 'ull do to put i' the shafts wi' him.
If you can catch Adam for a husband, Hetty, you'll ride i' your own
spring-cart some day, I'll be your warrant."

Hetty was moving across the kitchen with the currants, 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.

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

completion: When Adam comes home from work, his mother is her usual querulous self, but he brushes off her complaints and declares that he must he left free to do what he thinks is right. He puts on his best clothes and goes to the Hall Farm, where he encounters Mrs. Poyser. She tells him that Hetty is in the garden with Totty and asks him to go and send the child in. Adam does so and then looks for Hetty. He comes upon her unawares and startles her; she blushes, and Adam takes this as a sign of love. It is a "sweet delusion," though; Hetty is thinking of Arthur. There is a lot of misunderstanding in the ensuing conversation; Adam tells Hetty of Arthur's plan to lend him money so that she will have a favorable view of his own prospects, but Hetty is interested in the information only because it relates to Arthur. He plucks a rose for her and Hetty puts it in her hair. Adam disapproves of this mark of vanity and says so; he maintains that Dinah's extremely plain style of dress is "very nice." They go into the house and Hetty goes upstairs while Adam socializes with the Poysers. Mrs. Poyser is angry with one of the maids for breaking some crockery until, suddenly, she drops a jug herself. She has been startled by the appearance of Hetty in one of her aunt's dresses and acts as if she's seen a ghost. After a few comments on Hetty's joke, the talk moves to other topics. Adam mentions his scheme for a second business and Mr. Poyser approves of it. Finally Adam leaves to visit Bartle Massey, the village schoolmaster.


prompt:
Chapter: Bartle Massey's was one of a few scattered houses on the edge of a
common, which was divided by the road to Treddleston. Adam reached it
in a quarter of an hour after leaving the Hall Farm; and when he had his
hand on the door-latch, he could see, through the curtainless window,
that there were eight or nine heads bending over the desks, lighted by
thin dips.

When he entered, a reading lesson was going forward and Bartle Massey
merely nodded, leaving him to take his place where he pleased. He had
not come for the sake of a lesson to-night, and his mind was too full
of personal matters, too full of the last two hours he had passed in
Hetty's presence, for him to amuse himself with a book till school was
over; so he sat down in a corner and looked on with an absent mind. It
was a sort of scene which Adam had beheld almost weekly for years; he
knew by heart every arabesque flourish in the framed specimen of Bartle
Massey's handwriting which hung over the schoolmaster's head, by way of
keeping a lofty ideal before the minds of his pupils; he knew the backs
of all the books on the shelf running along the whitewashed wall above
the pegs for the slates; he knew exactly how many grains were gone out
of the ear of Indian corn that hung from one of the rafters; he had long
ago exhausted the resources of his imagination in trying to think
how the bunch of leathery seaweed had looked and grown in its native
element; and from the place where he sat, he could make nothing of the
old map of England that hung against the opposite wall, for age had
turned it of a fine yellow brown, something like that of a well-seasoned
meerschaum. The drama that was going on was almost as familiar as the
scene, nevertheless habit had not made him indifferent to it, and even
in his present self-absorbed mood, Adam felt a momentary stirring of the
old fellow-feeling, as he looked at the rough men painfully holding pen
or pencil with their cramped hands, or humbly labouring through their
reading lesson.

The reading class now seated on the form in front of the schoolmaster's
desk consisted of the three most backward pupils. Adam would have known
it only by seeing Bartle Massey's face as he looked over his spectacles,
which he had shifted to the ridge of his nose, not requiring them for
present purposes. The face wore its mildest expression: the grizzled
bushy eyebrows had taken their more acute angle of compassionate
kindness, and the mouth, habitually compressed with a pout of the lower
lip, was relaxed so as to be ready to speak a helpful word or syllable
in a moment. This gentle expression was the more interesting because the
schoolmaster's nose, an irregular aquiline twisted a little on one side,
had rather a formidable character; and his brow, moreover, had that
peculiar tension which always impresses one as a sign of a keen
impatient temperament: the blue veins stood out like cords under the
transparent yellow skin, and this intimidating brow was softened by no
tendency to baldness, for the grey bristly hair, cut down to about an
inch in length, stood round it in as close ranks as ever.

"Nay, Bill, nay," Bartle was saying in a kind tone, as he nodded to
Adam, "begin that again, and then perhaps, it'll come to you what d-r-y
spells. It's the same lesson you read last week, you know."

"Bill" was a sturdy fellow, aged four-and-twenty, an excellent
stone-sawyer, who could get as good wages as any man in the trade of his
years; but he found a reading lesson in words of one syllable a harder
matter to deal with than the hardest stone he had ever had to saw. The
letters, he complained, were so "uncommon alike, there was no tellin'
'em one from another," the sawyer's business not being concerned with
minute differences such as exist between a letter with its tail
turned up and a letter with its tail turned down. But Bill had a firm
determination that he would learn to read, founded chiefly on two
reasons: first, that Tom Hazelow, his cousin, could read anything "right
off," whether it was print or writing, and Tom had sent him a letter
from twenty miles off, saying how he was prospering in the world and had
got an overlooker's place; secondly, that Sam Phillips, who sawed with
him, had learned to read when he was turned twenty, and what could be
done by a little fellow like Sam Phillips, Bill considered, could
be done by himself, seeing that he could pound Sam into wet clay if
circumstances required it. So here he was, pointing his big finger
towards three words at once, and turning his head on one side that he
might keep better hold with his eye of the one word which was to be
discriminated out of the group. The amount of knowledge Bartle Massey
must possess was something so dim and vast that Bill's imagination
recoiled before it: he would hardly have ventured to deny that the
schoolmaster might have something to do in bringing about the regular
return of daylight and the changes in the weather.

The man seated next to Bill was of a very different type: he was a
Methodist brickmaker who, after spending thirty years of his life in
perfect satisfaction with his ignorance, had lately "got religion," and
along with it the desire to read the Bible. But with him, too, learning
was a heavy business, and on his way out to-night he had offered as
usual a special prayer for help, seeing that he had undertaken this hard
task with a single eye to the nourishment of his soul--that he might
have a greater abundance of texts and hymns wherewith to banish evil
memories and the temptations of old habit--or, in brief language,
the devil. For the brickmaker had been a notorious poacher, and was
suspected, though there was no good evidence against him, of being the
man who had shot a neighbouring gamekeeper in the leg. However that
might be, it is certain that shortly after the accident referred to,
which was coincident with the arrival of an awakening Methodist preacher
at Treddleston, a great change had been observed in the brickmaker; and
though he was still known in the neighbourhood by his old sobriquet of
"Brimstone," there was nothing he held in so much horror as any further
transactions with that evil-smelling element. He was a broad-chested
fellow with a fervid temperament, which helped him better in imbibing
religious ideas than in the dry process of acquiring the mere human
knowledge of the alphabet. Indeed, he had been already a little shaken
in his resolution by a brother Methodist, who assured him that the
letter was a mere obstruction to the Spirit, and expressed a fear that
Brimstone was too eager for the knowledge that puffeth up.

The third beginner was a much more promising pupil. He was a tall but
thin and wiry man, nearly as old as Brimstone, with a very pale face and
hands stained a deep blue. He was a dyer, who in the course of dipping
homespun wool and old women's petticoats had got fired with the ambition
to learn a great deal more about the strange secrets of colour. He had
already a high reputation in the district for his dyes, and he was
bent on discovering some method by which he could reduce the expense
of crimsons and scarlets. The druggist at Treddleston had given him a
notion that he might save himself a great deal of labour and expense if
he could learn to read, and so he had begun to give his spare hours to
the night-school, resolving that his "little chap" should lose no time
in coming to Mr. Massey's day-school as soon as he was old enough.

It was touching to see these three big men, with the marks of their hard
labour about them, anxiously bending over the worn books and painfully
making out, "The grass is green," "The sticks are dry," "The corn is
ripe"--a very hard lesson to pass to after columns of single words
all alike except in the first letter. It was almost as if three rough
animals were making humble efforts to learn how they might become human.
And it touched the tenderest fibre in Bartle Massey's nature, for such
full-grown children as these were the only pupils for whom he had
no severe epithets and no impatient tones. He was not gifted with an
imperturbable temper, and on music-nights it was apparent that patience
could never be an easy virtue to him; but this evening, as he glances
over his spectacles at Bill Downes, the sawyer, who is turning his
head on one side with a desperate sense of blankness before the letters
d-r-y, his eyes shed their mildest and most encouraging light.

After the reading class, two youths between sixteen and nineteen came up
with the imaginary bills of parcels, which they had been writing out on
their slates and were now required to calculate "off-hand"--a test which
they stood with such imperfect success that Bartle Massey, whose eyes
had been glaring at them ominously through his spectacles for some
minutes, at length burst out in a bitter, high-pitched tone, pausing
between every sentence to rap the floor with a knobbed stick which
rested between his legs.

"Now, you see, you don't do this thing a bit better than you did a
fortnight ago, and I'll tell you what's the reason. You want to learn
accounts--that's well and good. But you think all you need do to learn
accounts is to come to me and do sums for an hour or so, two or three
times a-week; and no sooner do you get your caps on and turn out of
doors again than you sweep the whole thing clean out of your mind. You
go whistling about, and take no more care what you're thinking of
than if your heads were gutters for any rubbish to swill through that
happened to be in the way; and if you get a good notion in 'em,
it's pretty soon washed out again. You think knowledge is to be got
cheap--you'll come and pay Bartle Massey sixpence a-week, and he'll make
you clever at figures without your taking any trouble. But knowledge
isn't to be got with paying sixpence, let me tell you. If you're to know
figures, you must turn 'em over in your heads and keep your thoughts
fixed on 'em. There's nothing you can't turn into a sum, for there's
nothing but what's got number in it--even a fool. You may say to
yourselves, 'I'm one fool, and Jack's another; if my fool's head weighed
four pound, and Jack's three pound three ounces and three quarters, how
many pennyweights heavier would my head be than Jack's?' A man that had
got his heart in learning figures would make sums for himself and work
'em in his head. When he sat at his shoemaking, he'd count his stitches
by fives, and then put a price on his stitches, say half a farthing, and
then see how much money he could get in an hour; and then ask himself
how much money he'd get in a day at that rate; and then how much ten
workmen would get working three, or twenty, or a hundred years at that
rate--and all the while his needle would be going just as fast as if
he left his head empty for the devil to dance in. But the long and the
short of it is--I'll have nobody in my night-school that doesn't strive
to learn what he comes to learn, as hard as if he was striving to get
out of a dark hole into broad daylight. I'll send no man away because
he's stupid: if Billy Taft, the idiot, wanted to learn anything, I'd not
refuse to teach him. But I'll not throw away good knowledge on people
who think they can get it by the sixpenn'orth, and carry it away with
'em as they would an ounce of snuff. So never come to me again, if you
can't show that you've been working with your own heads, instead of
thinking that you can pay for mine to work for you. That's the last word
I've got to say to you."

With this final sentence, Bartle Massey gave a sharper rap than ever
with his knobbed stick, and the discomfited lads got up to go with a
sulky look. The other pupils had happily only their writing-books to
show, in various stages of progress from pot-hooks to round text; and
mere pen-strokes, however perverse, were less exasperating to Bartle
than false arithmetic. He was a little more severe than usual on Jacob
Storey's Z's, of which poor Jacob had written a pageful, all with their
tops turned the wrong way, with a puzzled sense that they were not right
"somehow." But he observed in apology, that it was a letter you never
wanted hardly, and he thought it had only been there "to finish off th'
alphabet, like, though ampusand (&) would ha' done as well, for what he
could see."

At last the pupils had all taken their hats and said their
"Good-nights," and Adam, knowing his old master's habits, rose and said,
"Shall I put the candles out, Mr. Massey?"

"Yes, my boy, yes, all but this, which I'll carry into the house; and
just lock the outer door, now you're near it," said Bartle, getting his
stick in the fitting angle to help him in descending from his stool.
He was no sooner on the ground than it became obvious why the stick
was necessary--the left leg was much shorter than the right. But the
school-master was so active with his lameness that it was hardly thought
of as a misfortune; and if you had seen him make his way along the
schoolroom floor, and up the step into his kitchen, you would perhaps
have understood why the naughty boys sometimes felt that his pace might
be indefinitely quickened and that he and his stick might overtake them
even in their swiftest run.

The moment he appeared at the kitchen door with the candle in his
hand, a faint whimpering began in the chimney-corner, and a
brown-and-tan-coloured bitch, of that wise-looking breed with short legs
and long body, known to an unmechanical generation as turnspits, came
creeping along the floor, wagging her tail, and hesitating at every
other step, as if her affections were painfully divided between the
hamper in the chimney-corner and the master, whom she could not leave
without a greeting.

"Well, Vixen, well then, how are the babbies?" said the schoolmaster,
making haste towards the chimney-corner and holding the candle over
the low hamper, where two extremely blind puppies lifted up their heads
towards the light from a nest of flannel and wool. Vixen could not even
see her master look at them without painful excitement: she got into the
hamper and got out again the next moment, and behaved with true feminine
folly, though looking all the while as wise as a dwarf with a large
old-fashioned head and body on the most abbreviated legs.

"Why, you've got a family, I see, Mr. Massey?" said Adam, smiling, as
he came into the kitchen. "How's that? I thought it was against the law
here."

"Law? What's the use o' law when a man's once such a fool as to let a
woman into his house?" said Bartle, turning away from the hamper with
some bitterness. He always called Vixen a woman, and seemed to have lost
all consciousness that he was using a figure of speech. "If I'd known
Vixen was a woman, I'd never have held the boys from drowning her; but
when I'd got her into my hand, I was forced to take to her. And now you
see what she's brought me to--the sly, hypocritical wench"--Bartle spoke
these last words in a rasping tone of reproach, and looked at Vixen, who
poked down her head and turned up her eyes towards him with a keen
sense of opprobrium--"and contrived to be brought to bed on a Sunday at
church-time. I've wished again and again I'd been a bloody minded man,
that I could have strangled the mother and the brats with one cord."

"I'm glad it was no worse a cause kept you from church," said Adam. "I
was afraid you must be ill for the first time i' your life. And I was
particularly sorry not to have you at church yesterday."

"Ah, my boy, I know why, I know why," said Bartle kindly, going up to
Adam and raising his hand up to the shoulder that was almost on a level
with his own head. "You've had a rough bit o' road to get over since I
saw you--a rough bit o' road. But I'm in hopes there are better times
coming for you. I've got some news to tell you. But I must get my supper
first, for I'm hungry, I'm hungry. Sit down, sit down."

Bartel went into his little pantry, and brought out an excellent
home-baked loaf; for it was his one extravagance in these dear times
to eat bread once a-day instead of oat-cake; and he justified it by
observing, that what a schoolmaster wanted was brains, and oat-cake ran
too much to bone instead of brains. Then came a piece of cheese and a
quart jug with a crown of foam upon it. He placed them all on the
round deal table which stood against his large arm-chair in the
chimney-corner, with Vixen's hamper on one side of it and a window-shelf
with a few books piled up in it on the other. The table was as clean as
if Vixen had been an excellent housewife in a checkered apron; so was
the quarry floor; and the old carved oaken press, table, and chairs,
which in these days would be bought at a high price in aristocratic
houses, though, in that period of spider-legs and inlaid cupids, Bartle
had got them for an old song, where as free from dust as things could be
at the end of a summer's day.

"Now, then, my boy, draw up, draw up. We'll not talk about business till
we've had our supper. No man can be wise on an empty stomach. But," said
Bartle, rising from his chair again, "I must give Vixen her supper
too, confound her! Though she'll do nothing with it but nourish those
unnecessary babbies. That's the way with these women--they've got no
head-pieces to nourish, and so their food all runs either to fat or to
brats."

He brought out of the pantry a dish of scraps, which Vixen at once fixed
her eyes on, and jumped out of her hamper to lick up with the utmost
dispatch.

"I've had my supper, Mr. Massey," said Adam, "so I'll look on while you
eat yours. I've been at the Hall Farm, and they always have their supper
betimes, you know: they don't keep your late hours."

"I know little about their hours," said Bartle dryly, cutting his bread
and not shrinking from the crust. "It's a house I seldom go into, though
I'm fond of the boys, and Martin Poyser's a good fellow. There's too
many women in the house for me: I hate the sound of women's voices;
they're always either a-buzz or a-squeak--always either a-buzz or
a-squeak. Mrs. Poyser keeps at the top o' the talk like a fife; and
as for the young lasses, I'd as soon look at water-grubs. I know what
they'll turn to--stinging gnats, stinging gnats. Here, take some ale, my
boy: it's been drawn for you--it's been drawn for you."

"Nay, Mr. Massey," said Adam, who took his old friend's whim more
seriously than usual to-night, "don't be so hard on the creaturs God has
made to be companions for us. A working-man 'ud be badly off without
a wife to see to th' house and the victual, and make things clean and
comfortable."

"Nonsense! It's the silliest lie a sensible man like you ever believed,
to say a woman makes a house comfortable. It's a story got up because
the women are there and something must be found for 'em to do. I tell
you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but
what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and
they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha' been left to
the men--it had better ha' been left to the men. I tell you, a woman
'ull bake you a pie every week of her life and never come to see that
the hotter th' oven the shorter the time. I tell you, a woman 'ull make
your porridge every day for twenty years and never think of measuring
the proportion between the meal and the milk--a little more or less,
she'll think, doesn't signify. The porridge WILL be awk'ard now and
then: if it's wrong, it's summat in the meal, or it's summat in the
milk, or it's summat in the water. Look at me! I make my own bread, and
there's no difference between one batch and another from year's end to
year's end; but if I'd got any other woman besides Vixen in the house,
I must pray to the Lord every baking to give me patience if the bread
turned out heavy. And as for cleanliness, my house is cleaner than any
other house on the Common, though the half of 'em swarm with women. Will
Baker's lad comes to help me in a morning, and we get as much cleaning
done in one hour, without any fuss, as a woman 'ud get done in three,
and all the while be sending buckets o' water after your ankles, and let
the fender and the fire-irons stand in the middle o' the floor half the
day for you to break your shins against 'em. Don't tell me about God
having made such creatures to be companions for us! I don't say but
He might make Eve to be a companion to Adam in Paradise--there was no
cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with and make
mischief, though you see what mischief she did as soon as she'd an
opportunity. But it's an impious, unscriptural opinion to say a woman's
a blessing to a man now; you might as well say adders and wasps, and
foxes and wild beasts are a blessing, when they're only the evils that
belong to this state o' probation, which it's lawful for a man to keep
as clear of as he can in this life, hoping to get quit of 'em for ever
in another--hoping to get quit of 'em for ever in another."

Bartle had become so excited and angry in the course of his invective
that he had forgotten his supper, and only used the knife for the
purpose of rapping the table with the haft. But towards the close, the
raps became so sharp and frequent, and his voice so quarrelsome, that
Vixen felt it incumbent on her to jump out of the hamper and bark
vaguely.

"Quiet, Vixen!" snarled Bartle, turning round upon her. "You're like the
rest o' the women--always putting in your word before you know why."

Vixen returned to her hamper again in humiliation, and her master
continued his supper in a silence which Adam did not choose to
interrupt; he knew the old man would be in a better humour when he had
had his supper and lighted his pipe. Adam was used to hear him talk in
this way, but had never learned so much of Bartle's past life as to know
whether his view of married comfort was founded on experience. On that
point Bartle was mute, and it was even a secret where he had lived
previous to the twenty years in which happily for the peasants and
artisans of this neighbourhood he had been settled among them as their
only schoolmaster. If anything like a question was ventured on this
subject, Bartle always replied, "Oh, I've seen many places--I've been a
deal in the south," and the Loamshire men would as soon have thought of
asking for a particular town or village in Africa as in "the south."

"Now then, my boy," said Bartle, at last, when he had poured out his
second mug of ale and lighted his pipe, "now then, we'll have a little
talk. But tell me first, have you heard any particular news to-day?"

"No," said Adam, "not as I remember."

"Ah, they'll keep it close, they'll keep it close, I daresay. But I
found it out by chance; and it's news that may concern you, Adam, else
I'm a man that don't know a superficial square foot from a solid."

Here Bartle gave a series of fierce and rapid puffs, looking earnestly
the while at Adam. Your impatient loquacious man has never any notion of
keeping his pipe alight by gentle measured puffs; he is always letting
it go nearly out, and then punishing it for that negligence. At last he
said, "Satchell's got a paralytic stroke. I found it out from the lad
they sent to Treddleston for the doctor, before seven o'clock this
morning. He's a good way beyond sixty, you know; it's much if he gets
over it."

"Well," said Adam, "I daresay there'd be more rejoicing than sorrow
in the parish at his being laid up. He's been a selfish, tale-bearing,
mischievous fellow; but, after all, there's nobody he's done so much
harm to as to th' old squire. Though it's the squire himself as is to
blame--making a stupid fellow like that a sort o' man-of-all-work, just
to save th' expense of having a proper steward to look after th' estate.
And he's lost more by ill management o' the woods, I'll be bound, than
'ud pay for two stewards. If he's laid on the shelf, it's to be hoped
he'll make way for a better man, but I don't see how it's like to make
any difference to me."

"But I see it, but I see it," said Bartle, "and others besides me. The
captain's coming of age now--you know that as well as I do--and it's to
be expected he'll have a little more voice in things. And I know, and
you know too, what 'ud be the captain's wish about the woods, if there
was a fair opportunity for making a change. He's said in plenty of
people's hearing that he'd make you manager of the woods to-morrow, if
he'd the power. Why, Carroll, Mr. Irwine's butler, heard him say so to
the parson not many days ago. Carroll looked in when we were smoking
our pipes o' Saturday night at Casson's, and he told us about it; and
whenever anybody says a good word for you, the parson's ready to back
it, that I'll answer for. It was pretty well talked over, I can tell
you, at Casson's, and one and another had their fling at you; for if
donkeys set to work to sing, you're pretty sure what the tune'll be."

"Why, did they talk it over before Mr. Burge?" said Adam; "or wasn't he
there o' Saturday?"

"Oh, he went away before Carroll came; and Casson--he's always for
setting other folks right, you know--would have it Burge was the man to
have the management of the woods. 'A substantial man,' says he, 'with
pretty near sixty years' experience o' timber: it 'ud be all very well
for Adam Bede to act under him, but it isn't to be supposed the squire
'ud appoint a young fellow like Adam, when there's his elders and
betters at hand!' But I said, 'That's a pretty notion o' yours, Casson.
Why, Burge is the man to buy timber; would you put the woods into his
hands and let him make his own bargains? I think you don't leave your
customers to score their own drink, do you? And as for age, what that's
worth depends on the quality o' the liquor. It's pretty well known who's
the backbone of Jonathan Burge's business.'"

"I thank you for your good word, Mr. Massey," said Adam. "But, for
all that, Casson was partly i' the right for once. There's not much
likelihood that th' old squire 'ud ever consent t' employ me. I offended
him about two years ago, and he's never forgiven me."

"Why, how was that? You never told me about it," said Bartle.

"Oh, it was a bit o' nonsense. I'd made a frame for a screen for
Miss Lyddy--she's allays making something with her worsted-work, you
know--and she'd given me particular orders about this screen, and there
was as much talking and measuring as if we'd been planning a house.
However, it was a nice bit o' work, and I liked doing it for her. But,
you know, those little friggling things take a deal o' time. I only
worked at it in overhours--often late at night--and I had to go to
Treddleston over an' over again about little bits o' brass nails and
such gear; and I turned the little knobs and the legs, and carved th'
open work, after a pattern, as nice as could be. And I was uncommon
pleased with it when it was done. And when I took it home, Miss Lyddy
sent for me to bring it into her drawing-room, so as she might give me
directions about fastening on the work--very fine needlework, Jacob and
Rachel a-kissing one another among the sheep, like a picture--and th'
old squire was sitting there, for he mostly sits with her. Well, she was
mighty pleased with the screen, and then she wanted to know what pay she
was to give me. I didn't speak at random--you know it's not my way; I'd
calculated pretty close, though I hadn't made out a bill, and I said,
'One pound thirteen.' That was paying for the mater'als and paying me, but
none too much, for my work. Th' old squire looked up at this, and peered
in his way at the screen, and said, 'One pound thirteen for a gimcrack
like that! Lydia, my dear, if you must spend money on these things,
why don't you get them at Rosseter, instead of paying double price for
clumsy work here? Such things are not work for a carpenter like Adam.
Give him a guinea, and no more.' Well, Miss Lyddy, I reckon, believed
what he told her, and she's not overfond o' parting with the money
herself--she's not a bad woman at bottom, but she's been brought up
under his thumb; so she began fidgeting with her purse, and turned as
red as her ribbon. But I made a bow, and said, 'No, thank you, madam;
I'll make you a present o' the screen, if you please. I've charged
the regular price for my work, and I know it's done well; and I know,
begging His Honour's pardon, that you couldn't get such a screen at
Rosseter under two guineas. I'm willing to give you my work--it's been
done in my own time, and nobody's got anything to do with it but me; but
if I'm paid, I can't take a smaller price than I asked, because that
'ud be like saying I'd asked more than was just. With your leave, madam,
I'll bid you good-morning.' I made my bow and went out before she'd
time to say any more, for she stood with the purse in her hand, looking
almost foolish. I didn't mean to be disrespectful, and I spoke as polite
as I could; but I can give in to no man, if he wants to make it out as
I'm trying to overreach him. And in the evening the footman brought me
the one pound thirteen wrapped in paper. But since then I've seen pretty
clear as th' old squire can't abide me."

"That's likely enough, that's likely enough," said Bartle meditatively.
"The only way to bring him round would be to show him what was for his
own interest, and that the captain may do--that the captain may do."

"Nay, I don't know," said Adam; "the squire's 'cute enough but it takes
something else besides 'cuteness to make folks see what'll be their
interest in the long run. It takes some conscience and belief in right
and wrong, I see that pretty clear. You'd hardly ever bring round th'
old squire to believe he'd gain as much in a straightfor'ard way as by
tricks and turns. And, besides, I've not much mind to work under him:
I don't want to quarrel with any gentleman, more particular an old
gentleman turned eighty, and I know we couldn't agree long. If the
captain was master o' th' estate, it 'ud be different: he's got a
conscience and a will to do right, and I'd sooner work for him nor for
any man living."

"Well, well, my boy, if good luck knocks at your door, don't you put
your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business,
that's all. You must learn to deal with odd and even in life, as well
as in figures. I tell you now, as I told you ten years ago, when you
pommelled young Mike Holdsworth for wanting to pass a bad shilling
before you knew whether he was in jest or earnest--you're overhasty and
proud, and apt to set your teeth against folks that don't square to your
notions. It's no harm for me to be a bit fiery and stiff-backed--I'm an
old schoolmaster, and shall never want to get on to a higher perch. But
where's the use of all the time I've spent in teaching you writing and
mapping and mensuration, if you're not to get for'ard in the world and
show folks there's some advantage in having a head on your shoulders,
instead of a turnip? Do you mean to go on turning up your nose at every
opportunity because it's got a bit of a smell about it that nobody finds
out but yourself? It's as foolish as that notion o' yours that a wife
is to make a working-man comfortable. Stuff and nonsense! Stuff and
nonsense! Leave that to fools that never got beyond a sum in simple
addition. Simple addition enough! Add one fool to another fool, and in
six years' time six fools more--they're all of the same denomination,
big and little's nothing to do with the sum!"

During this rather heated exhortation to coolness and discretion the
pipe had gone out, and Bartle gave the climax to his speech by striking
a light furiously, after which he puffed with fierce resolution, fixing
his eye still on Adam, who was trying not to laugh.

"There's a good deal o' sense in what you say, Mr. Massey," Adam began,
as soon as he felt quite serious, "as there always is. But you'll give
in that it's no business o' mine to be building on chances that may
never happen. What I've got to do is to work as well as I can with the
tools and mater'als I've got in my hands. If a good chance comes to me,
I'll think o' what you've been saying; but till then, I've got nothing
to do but to trust to my own hands and my own head-piece. I'm turning
over a little plan for Seth and me to go into the cabinet-making a bit
by ourselves, and win a extra pound or two in that way. But it's getting
late now--it'll be pretty near eleven before I'm at home, and Mother may
happen to lie awake; she's more fidgety nor usual now. So I'll bid you
good-night."

"Well, well, we'll go to the gate with you--it's a fine night," said
Bartle, taking up his stick. Vixen was at once on her legs, and without
further words the three walked out into the starlight, by the side of
Bartle's potato-beds, to the little gate.

"Come to the music o' Friday night, if you can, my boy," said the old
man, as he closed the gate after Adam and leaned against it.

"Aye, aye," said Adam, striding along towards the streak of pale road.
He was the only object moving on the wide common. The two grey donkeys,
just visible in front of the gorse bushes, stood as still as limestone
images--as still as the grey-thatched roof of the mud cottage a little
farther on. Bartle kept his eye on the moving figure till it passed into
the darkness, while Vixen, in a state of divided affection, had twice
run back to the house to bestow a parenthetic lick on her puppies.

"Aye, aye," muttered the schoolmaster, as Adam disappeared, "there you
go, stalking along--stalking along; but you wouldn't have been what you
are if you hadn't had a bit of old lame Bartle inside you. The strongest
calf must have something to suck at. There's plenty of these big,
lumbering fellows 'ud never have known their A B C if it hadn't been for
Bartle Massey. Well, well, Vixen, you foolish wench, what is it, what is
it? I must go in, must I? Aye, aye, I'm never to have a will o' my own
any more. And those pups--what do you think I'm to do with 'em, when
they're twice as big as you? For I'm pretty sure the father was that
hulking bull-terrier of Will Baker's--wasn't he now, eh, you sly hussy?"

(Here Vixen tucked her tail between her legs and ran forward into the
house. Subjects are sometimes broached which a well-bred female will
ignore.)

"But where's the use of talking to a woman with babbies?" continued
Bartle. "She's got no conscience--no conscience; it's all run to milk."

Book Three

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

completion: Adam arrives at Bartle Massey's school and waits until the evening's lessons are over. Bartle's students are boys and men of the town to whom he imparts some elementary skills in reading, writing, and "cal'clating"; the author gives humorous portraits of several of them. Adam and Bartle go into the latter's house. A dog with two puppies greets them. The dog, Vixen, is apparently Bartle's "woman"; he is a confirmed old bachelor who loves to rail at the follies of women, and Vixen is the only female with whom he will associate. Most of the conversation centers on women, Adam defending and Bartle execrating them. The schoolmaster then tells Adam that the Squire's steward has had a stroke. This man had managed the woods belonging to the estate, and Bartle feels that the job will now be offered to Adam. Adam doubts it; he and the old squire had a misunderstanding two years before. Bartle says that Arthur will use his influence to get Adam the job and he counsels Adam not to turn it down out of pride. Adam replies that he'll take this advice into account if the job ever is offered, and the two friends part.