prompt:
Chapter: THE first autumnal afternoon sunshine of 1801--more than eighteen months
after that parting of Adam and Arthur in the Hermitage--was on the
yard at the Hall Farm; and the bull-dog was in one of his most excited
moments, for it was that hour of the day when the cows were being driven
into the yard for their afternoon milking. No wonder the patient beasts
ran confusedly into the wrong places, for the alarming din of the
bull-dog was mingled with more distant sounds which the timid feminine
creatures, with pardonable superstition, imagined also to have some
relation to their own movements--with the tremendous crack of the
waggoner's whip, the roar of his voice, and the booming thunder of the
waggon, as it left the rick-yard empty of its golden load.

The milking of the cows was a sight Mrs. Poyser loved, and at this
hour on mild days she was usually standing at the house door, with her
knitting in her hands, in quiet contemplation, only heightened to a
keener interest when the vicious yellow cow, who had once kicked over a
pailful of precious milk, was about to undergo the preventive punishment
of having her hinder-legs strapped.

To-day, however, Mrs. Poyser gave but a divided attention to the
arrival of the cows, for she was in eager discussion with Dinah, who was
stitching Mr. Poyser's shirt-collars, and had borne patiently to have
her thread broken three times by Totty pulling at her arm with a sudden
insistence that she should look at "Baby," that is, at a large wooden
doll with no legs and a long skirt, whose bald head Totty, seated in her
small chair at Dinah's side, was caressing and pressing to her fat cheek
with much fervour. Totty is larger by more than two years' growth than
when you first saw her, and she has on a black frock under her pinafore.
Mrs. Poyser too has on a black gown, which seems to heighten the family
likeness between her and Dinah. In other respects there is little
outward change now discernible in our old friends, or in the pleasant
house-place, bright with polished oak and pewter.

"I never saw the like to you, Dinah," Mrs. Poyser was saying, "when
you've once took anything into your head: there's no more moving you
than the rooted tree. You may say what you like, but I don't believe
that's religion; for what's the Sermon on the Mount about, as you're so
fond o' reading to the boys, but doing what other folks 'ud have you do?
But if it was anything unreasonable they wanted you to do, like taking
your cloak off and giving it to 'em, or letting 'em slap you i' the
face, I daresay you'd be ready enough. It's only when one 'ud have you
do what's plain common sense and good for yourself, as you're obstinate
th' other way."

"Nay, dear Aunt," said Dinah, smiling slightly as she went on with her
work, "I'm sure your wish 'ud be a reason for me to do anything that I
didn't feel it was wrong to do."

"Wrong! You drive me past bearing. What is there wrong, I should like
to know, i' staying along wi' your own friends, as are th' happier for
having you with 'em an' are willing to provide for you, even if your
work didn't more nor pay 'em for the bit o' sparrow's victual y' eat
and the bit o' rag you put on? An' who is it, I should like to know, as
you're bound t' help and comfort i' the world more nor your own flesh
and blood--an' me th' only aunt you've got above-ground, an' am brought
to the brink o' the grave welly every winter as comes, an' there's the
child as sits beside you 'ull break her little heart when you go, an'
the grandfather not been dead a twelvemonth, an' your uncle 'ull miss
you so as never was--a-lighting his pipe an' waiting on him, an' now I
can trust you wi' the butter, an' have had all the trouble o' teaching
you, and there's all the sewing to be done, an' I must have a strange
gell out o' Treddles'on to do it--an' all because you must go back to
that bare heap o' stones as the very crows fly over an' won't stop at."

"Dear Aunt Rachel," said Dinah, looking up in Mrs. Poyser's face, "it's
your kindness makes you say I'm useful to you. You don't really want me
now, for Nancy and Molly are clever at their work, and you're in good
health now, by the blessing of God, and my uncle is of a cheerful
countenance again, and you have neighbours and friends not a few--some
of them come to sit with my uncle almost daily. Indeed, you will not
miss me; and at Snowfield there are brethren and sisters in great need,
who have none of those comforts you have around you. I feel that I am
called back to those amongst whom my lot was first cast. I feel drawn
again towards the hills where I used to be blessed in carrying the word
of life to the sinful and desolate."

"You feel! Yes," said Mrs. Poyser, returning from a parenthetic glance
at the cows, "that's allays the reason I'm to sit down wi', when you've
a mind to do anything contrairy. What do you want to be preaching for
more than you're preaching now? Don't you go off, the Lord knows where,
every Sunday a-preaching and praying? An' haven't you got Methodists
enow at Treddles'on to go and look at, if church-folks's faces are too
handsome to please you? An' isn't there them i' this parish as you've
got under hand, and they're like enough to make friends wi' Old Harry
again as soon as your back's turned? There's that Bessy Cranage--she'll
be flaunting i' new finery three weeks after you're gone, I'll be bound.
She'll no more go on in her new ways without you than a dog 'ull stand
on its hind-legs when there's nobody looking. But I suppose it doesna
matter so much about folks's souls i' this country, else you'd be for
staying with your own aunt, for she's none so good but what you might
help her to be better."

There was a certain something in Mrs. Poyser's voice just then, which
she did not wish to be noticed, so she turned round hastily to look at
the clock, and said: "See there! It's tea-time; an' if Martin's i' the
rick-yard, he'll like a cup. Here, Totty, my chicken, let mother put
your bonnet on, and then you go out into the rick-yard and see if
Father's there, and tell him he mustn't go away again without coming t'
have a cup o' tea; and tell your brothers to come in too."

Totty trotted off in her flapping bonnet, while Mrs. Poyser set out the
bright oak table and reached down the tea-cups.

"You talk o' them gells Nancy and Molly being clever i' their work,"
she began again; "it's fine talking. They're all the same, clever or
stupid--one can't trust 'em out o' one's sight a minute. They want
somebody's eye on 'em constant if they're to be kept to their work.
An' suppose I'm ill again this winter, as I was the winter before last?
Who's to look after 'em then, if you're gone? An' there's that blessed
child--something's sure t' happen to her--they'll let her tumble into
the fire, or get at the kettle wi' the boiling lard in't, or some
mischief as 'ull lame her for life; an' it'll be all your fault, Dinah."

"Aunt," said Dinah, "I promise to come back to you in the winter if
you're ill. Don't think I will ever stay away from you if you're in real
want of me. But, indeed, it is needful for my own soul that I should go
away from this life of ease and luxury in which I have all things too
richly to enjoy--at least that I should go away for a short space. No
one can know but myself what are my inward needs, and the besetments I
am most in danger from. Your wish for me to stay is not a call of duty
which I refuse to hearken to because it is against my own desires; it
is a temptation that I must resist, lest the love of the creature should
become like a mist in my soul shutting out the heavenly light."

"It passes my cunning to know what you mean by ease and luxury," said
Mrs. Poyser, as she cut the bread and butter. "It's true there's good
victual enough about you, as nobody shall ever say I don't provide
enough and to spare, but if there's ever a bit o' odds an' ends as
nobody else 'ud eat, you're sure to pick it out...but look there!
There's Adam Bede a-carrying the little un in. I wonder how it is he's
come so early."

Mrs. Poyser hastened to the door for the pleasure of looking at her
darling in a new position, with love in her eyes but reproof on her
tongue.

"Oh for shame, Totty! Little gells o' five year old should be ashamed to
be carried. Why, Adam, she'll break your arm, such a big gell as that;
set her down--for shame!"

"Nay, nay," said Adam, "I can lift her with my hand--I've no need to
take my arm to it."

Totty, looking as serenely unconscious of remark as a fat white puppy,
was set down at the door-place, and the mother enforced her reproof with
a shower of kisses.

"You're surprised to see me at this hour o' the day," said Adam.

"Yes, but come in," said Mrs. Poyser, making way for him; "there's no
bad news, I hope?"

"No, nothing bad," Adam answered, as he went up to Dinah and put out his
hand to her. She had laid down her work and stood up, instinctively, as
he approached her. A faint blush died away from her pale cheek as she
put her hand in his and looked up at him timidly.

"It's an errand to you brought me, Dinah," said Adam, apparently
unconscious that he was holding her hand all the while; "mother's a bit
ailing, and she's set her heart on your coming to stay the night with
her, if you'll be so kind. I told her I'd call and ask you as I came
from the village. She overworks herself, and I can't persuade her to
have a little girl t' help her. I don't know what's to be done."

Adam released Dinah's hand as he ceased speaking, and was expecting an
answer, but before she had opened her lips Mrs. Poyser said, "Look there
now! I told you there was folks enow t' help i' this parish, wi'out
going further off. There's Mrs. Bede getting as old and cas'alty as can
be, and she won't let anybody but you go a-nigh her hardly. The folks at
Snowfield have learnt by this time to do better wi'out you nor she can."

"I'll put my bonnet on and set off directly, if you don't want anything
done first, Aunt," said Dinah, folding up her work.

"Yes, I do want something done. I want you t' have your tea, child; it's
all ready--and you'll have a cup, Adam, if y' arena in too big a hurry."

"Yes, I'll have a cup, please; and then I'll walk with Dinah. I'm going
straight home, for I've got a lot o' timber valuations to write out."

"Why, Adam, lad, are you here?" said Mr. Poyser, entering warm and
coatless, with the two black-eyed boys behind him, still looking as much
like him as two small elephants are like a large one. "How is it we've
got sight o' you so long before foddering-time?"

"I came on an errand for Mother," said Adam. "She's got a touch of her
old complaint, and she wants Dinah to go and stay with her a bit."

"Well, we'll spare her for your mother a little while," said Mr. Poyser.
"But we wonna spare her for anybody else, on'y her husband."

"Husband!" said Marty, who was at the most prosaic and literal period of
the boyish mind. "Why, Dinah hasn't got a husband."

"Spare her?" said Mrs. Poyser, placing a seed-cake on the table and then
seating herself to pour out the tea. "But we must spare her, it seems,
and not for a husband neither, but for her own megrims. Tommy, what are
you doing to your little sister's doll? Making the child naughty, when
she'd be good if you'd let her. You shanna have a morsel o' cake if you
behave so."

Tommy, with true brotherly sympathy, was amusing himself by turning
Dolly's skirt over her bald head and exhibiting her truncated body to
the general scorn--an indignity which cut Totty to the heart.

"What do you think Dinah's been a-telling me since dinner-time?" Mrs.
Poyser continued, looking at her husband.

"Eh! I'm a poor un at guessing," said Mr. Poyser.

"Why, she means to go back to Snowfield again, and work i' the mill,
and starve herself, as she used to do, like a creatur as has got no
friends."

Mr. Poyser did not readily find words to express his unpleasant
astonishment; he only looked from his wife to Dinah, who had now seated
herself beside Totty, as a bulwark against brotherly playfulness, and
was busying herself with the children's tea. If he had been given to
making general reflections, it would have occurred to him that there was
certainly a change come over Dinah, for she never used to change colour;
but, as it was, he merely observed that her face was flushed at that
moment. Mr. Poyser thought she looked the prettier for it: it was
a flush no deeper than the petal of a monthly rose. Perhaps it came
because her uncle was looking at her so fixedly; but there is no
knowing, for just then Adam was saying, with quiet surprise, "Why, I
hoped Dinah was settled among us for life. I thought she'd given up the
notion o' going back to her old country."

"Thought! Yes," said Mrs. Poyser, "and so would anybody else ha'
thought, as had got their right end up'ards. But I suppose you must be
a Methodist to know what a Methodist 'ull do. It's ill guessing what the
bats are flying after."

"Why, what have we done to you. Dinah, as you must go away from us?"
said Mr. Poyser, still pausing over his tea-cup. "It's like breaking
your word, welly, for your aunt never had no thought but you'd make this
your home."

"Nay, Uncle," said Dinah, trying to be quite calm. "When I first came, I
said it was only for a time, as long as I could be of any comfort to my
aunt."

"Well, an' who said you'd ever left off being a comfort to me?" said
Mrs. Poyser. "If you didna mean to stay wi' me, you'd better never ha'
come. Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it."

"Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, who objected to exaggerated views. "Thee
mustna say so; we should ha' been ill off wi'out her, Lady day was a
twelvemont'. We mun be thankful for that, whether she stays or no. But
I canna think what she mun leave a good home for, to go back int' a
country where the land, most on't, isna worth ten shillings an acre,
rent and profits."

"Why, that's just the reason she wants to go, as fur as she can give a
reason," said Mrs. Poyser. "She says this country's too comfortable,
an' there's too much t' eat, an' folks arena miserable enough. And she's
going next week. I canna turn her, say what I will. It's allays the way
wi' them meek-faced people; you may's well pelt a bag o' feathers as
talk to 'em. But I say it isna religion, to be so obstinate--is it now,
Adam?"

Adam saw that Dinah was more disturbed than he had ever seen her by any
matter relating to herself, and, anxious to relieve her, if possible,
he said, looking at her affectionately, "Nay, I can't find fault with
anything Dinah does. I believe her thoughts are better than our guesses,
let 'em be what they may. I should ha' been thankful for her to stay
among us, but if she thinks well to go, I wouldn't cross her, or make it
hard to her by objecting. We owe her something different to that."

As it often happens, the words intended to relieve her were just too
much for Dinah's susceptible feelings at this moment. The tears came
into the grey eyes too fast to be hidden and she got up hurriedly,
meaning it to be understood that she was going to put on her bonnet.

"Mother, what's Dinah crying for?" said Totty. "She isn't a naughty
dell."

"Thee'st gone a bit too fur," said Mr. Poyser. "We've no right t'
interfere with her doing as she likes. An' thee'dst be as angry as could
be wi' me, if I said a word against anything she did."

"Because you'd very like be finding fault wi'out reason," said Mrs.
Poyser. "But there's reason i' what I say, else I shouldna say it. It's
easy talking for them as can't love her so well as her own aunt does.
An' me got so used to her! I shall feel as uneasy as a new sheared sheep
when she's gone from me. An' to think of her leaving a parish where
she's so looked on. There's Mr. Irwine makes as much of her as if
she was a lady, for all her being a Methodist, an' wi' that maggot o'
preaching in her head--God forgi'e me if I'm i' the wrong to call it
so."

"Aye," said Mr. Poyser, looking jocose; "but thee dostna tell Adam what
he said to thee about it one day. The missis was saying, Adam, as the
preaching was the only fault to be found wi' Dinah, and Mr. Irwine says,
'But you mustn't find fault with her for that, Mrs. Poyser; you forget
she's got no husband to preach to. I'll answer for it, you give Poyser
many a good sermon.' The parson had thee there," Mr. Poyser added,
laughing unctuously. "I told Bartle Massey on it, an' he laughed too."

"Yes, it's a small joke sets men laughing when they sit a-staring at
one another with a pipe i' their mouths," said Mrs. Poyser. "Give
Bartle Massey his way and he'd have all the sharpness to himself. If
the chaff-cutter had the making of us, we should all be straw, I reckon.
Totty, my chicken, go upstairs to cousin Dinah, and see what she's
doing, and give her a pretty kiss."

This errand was devised for Totty as a means of checking certain
threatening symptoms about the corners of the mouth; for Tommy,
no longer expectant of cake, was lifting up his eyelids with his
forefingers and turning his eyeballs towards Totty in a way that she
felt to be disagreeably personal.

"You're rare and busy now--eh, Adam?" said Mr. Poyser. "Burge's getting
so bad wi' his asthmy, it's well if he'll ever do much riding about
again."

"Yes, we've got a pretty bit o' building on hand now," said Adam, "what
with the repairs on th' estate, and the new houses at Treddles'on."

"I'll bet a penny that new house Burge is building on his own bit o'
land is for him and Mary to go to," said Mr. Poyser. "He'll be for
laying by business soon, I'll warrant, and be wanting you to take to it
all and pay him so much by th' 'ear. We shall see you living on th' hill
before another twelvemont's over."

"Well," said Adam, "I should like t' have the business in my own hands.
It isn't as I mind much about getting any more money. We've enough and
to spare now, with only our two selves and mother; but I should like
t' have my own way about things--I could try plans then, as I can't do
now."

"You get on pretty well wi' the new steward, I reckon?" said Mr. Poyser.

"Yes, yes; he's a sensible man enough; understands farming--he's
carrying on the draining, and all that, capital. You must go some day
towards the Stonyshire side and see what alterations they're making. But
he's got no notion about buildings. You can so seldom get hold of a man
as can turn his brains to more nor one thing; it's just as if they wore
blinkers like th' horses and could see nothing o' one side of 'em. Now,
there's Mr. Irwine has got notions o' building more nor most architects;
for as for th' architects, they set up to be fine fellows, but the most
of 'em don't know where to set a chimney so as it shan't be quarrelling
with a door. My notion is, a practical builder that's got a bit o'
taste makes the best architect for common things; and I've ten times the
pleasure i' seeing after the work when I've made the plan myself."

Mr. Poyser listened with an admiring interest to Adam's discourse on
building, but perhaps it suggested to him that the building of his
corn-rick had been proceeding a little too long without the control of
the master's eye, for when Adam had done speaking, he got up and said,
"Well, lad, I'll bid you good-bye now, for I'm off to the rick-yard
again."

Adam rose too, for he saw Dinah entering, with her bonnet on and a
little basket in her hand, preceded by Totty.

"You're ready, I see, Dinah," Adam said; "so we'll set off, for the
sooner I'm at home the better."

"Mother," said Totty, with her treble pipe, "Dinah was saying her
prayers and crying ever so."

"Hush, hush," said the mother, "little gells mustn't chatter."

Whereupon the father, shaking with silent laughter, set Totty on the
white deal table and desired her to kiss him. Mr. and Mrs. Poyser, you
perceive, had no correct principles of education.

"Come back to-morrow if Mrs. Bede doesn't want you, Dinah," said Mrs.
Poyser: "but you can stay, you know, if she's ill."

So, when the good-byes had been said, Dinah and Adam left the Hall Farm
together.

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

completion: Jump forward to "the first autumnal afternoon sunshine of 1801" . It's a fine day on the Hall Farm. Mrs. Poyser is milking the cows, Totty is playing with her baby doll, and Dinah is back to lend a hand. Not for long, though. Dinah is once again thinking of leaving Hayslope. Her aunt already has plenty of help around the house and Dinah feels "called back to those amongst whom my lot was first cast" . The poor and the needy, that is. Does Mrs. Poyser settle for this? Oh no! Dinah is better than any of the other "help" and she's Mrs. Poyser's flesh and blood. Dinah, under pressure, promises to come back if Mrs. Poyser gets sick. We have a funny feeling that this concession didn't please anyone. Then Adam appears at the door, carrying Totty. And if any of you still have doubts about the "Dinah's got a crush on Adam" setup, consider this description of our lovebirds: "A faint blush died away from her pale cheek as she put her hand in his and looked up at him timidly" . Ooh, la la. Mrs. Poyser, though, sees a potential ally. As she points out, Lisbeth Bede could use someone like Dinah to help her out. And indeed she could. That's the very reason why Adam is at the Hall Farm, because his mother has "a touch of her old complaint, and she wants Dinah to go and stay with her a bit" . Now everyone piles on. Mr. Poyser shows up and voices his hope that "Dinah was settled among us for life" . Adam says he "should ha' been thankful for her to stay among us" . All this drives Dinah to tears. Dinah, Dinah, why are you crying? Perhaps she really doesn't want to leave. Perhaps the whole "love Adam from a distance" setup is getting to be too much. In any case, after some small talk with Mr. Poyser about his business prospects, Adam collects Dinah and heads home to Mom.


prompt:
Chapter: ADAM did not ask Dinah to take his arm when they got out into the lane.
He had never yet done so, often as they had walked together, for he had
observed that she never walked arm-in-arm with Seth, and he thought,
perhaps, that kind of support was not agreeable to her. So they walked
apart, though side by side, and the close poke of her little black
bonnet hid her face from him.

"You can't be happy, then, to make the Hall Farm your home, Dinah?"
Adam said, with the quiet interest of a brother, who has no anxiety for
himself in the matter. "It's a pity, seeing they're so fond of you."

"You know, Adam, my heart is as their heart, so far as love for them
and care for their welfare goes, but they are in no present need. Their
sorrows are healed, and I feel that I am called back to my old work, in
which I found a blessing that I have missed of late in the midst of too
abundant worldly good. I know it is a vain thought to flee from the work
that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing to our
own souls, as if we could choose for ourselves where we shall find the
fulness of the Divine Presence, instead of seeking it where alone it
is to be found, in loving obedience. But now, I believe, I have a clear
showing that my work lies elsewhere--at least for a time. In the years
to come, if my aunt's health should fail, or she should otherwise need
me, I shall return."

"You know best, Dinah," said Adam. "I don't believe you'd go against the
wishes of them that love you, and are akin to you, without a good and
sufficient reason in your own conscience. I've no right to say anything
about my being sorry: you know well enough what cause I have to put you
above every other friend I've got; and if it had been ordered so that
you could ha' been my sister, and lived with us all our lives, I should
ha' counted it the greatest blessing as could happen to us now. But
Seth tells me there's no hope o' that: your feelings are different, and
perhaps I'm taking too much upon me to speak about it."

Dinah made no answer, and they walked on in silence for some yards, till
they came to the stone stile, where, as Adam had passed through first
and turned round to give her his hand while she mounted the unusually
high step, she could not prevent him from seeing her face. It struck
him with surprise, for the grey eyes, usually so mild and grave, had
the bright uneasy glance which accompanies suppressed agitation, and
the slight flush in her cheeks, with which she had come downstairs, was
heightened to a deep rose-colour. She looked as if she were only sister
to Dinah. Adam was silent with surprise and conjecture for some moments,
and then he said, "I hope I've not hurt or displeased you by what I've
said, Dinah. Perhaps I was making too free. I've no wish different from
what you see to be best, and I'm satisfied for you to live thirty mile
off, if you think it right. I shall think of you just as much as I do
now, for you're bound up with what I can no more help remembering than I
can help my heart beating."

Poor Adam! Thus do men blunder. Dinah made no answer, but she presently
said, "Have you heard any news from that poor young man, since we last
spoke of him?"

Dinah always called Arthur so; she had never lost the image of him as
she had seen him in the prison.

"Yes," said Adam. "Mr. Irwine read me part of a letter from him
yesterday. It's pretty certain, they say, that there'll be a peace soon,
though nobody believes it'll last long; but he says he doesn't mean to
come home. He's no heart for it yet, and it's better for others that he
should keep away. Mr. Irwine thinks he's in the right not to come. It's
a sorrowful letter. He asks about you and the Poysers, as he always
does. There's one thing in the letter cut me a good deal: 'You can't
think what an old fellow I feel,' he says; 'I make no schemes now. I'm
the best when I've a good day's march or fighting before me.'"

"He's of a rash, warm-hearted nature, like Esau, for whom I have always
felt great pity," said Dinah. "That meeting between the brothers, where
Esau is so loving and generous, and Jacob so timid and distrustful,
notwithstanding his sense of the Divine favour, has always touched me
greatly. Truly, I have been tempted sometimes to say that Jacob was of a
mean spirit. But that is our trial: we must learn to see the good in the
midst of much that is unlovely."

"Ah," said Adam, "I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament.
He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were
going to reap the fruits. A man must have courage to look at his life
so, and think what'll come of it after he's dead and gone. A good solid
bit o' work lasts: if it's only laying a floor down, somebody's the
better for it being done well, besides the man as does it."

They were both glad to talk of subjects that were not personal, and
in this way they went on till they passed the bridge across the Willow
Brook, when Adam turned round and said, "Ah, here's Seth. I thought he'd
be home soon. Does he know of you're going, Dinah?"

"Yes, I told him last Sabbath."

Adam remembered now that Seth had come home much depressed on Sunday
evening, a circumstance which had been very unusual with him of late,
for the happiness he had in seeing Dinah every week seemed long to have
outweighed the pain of knowing she would never marry him. This evening
he had his habitual air of dreamy benignant contentment, until he came
quite close to Dinah and saw the traces of tears on her delicate eyelids
and eyelashes. He gave one rapid glance at his brother, but Adam was
evidently quite outside the current of emotion that had shaken Dinah: he
wore his everyday look of unexpectant calm. Seth tried not to let Dinah
see that he had noticed her face, and only said, "I'm thankful you're
come, Dinah, for Mother's been hungering after the sight of you all day.
She began to talk of you the first thing in the morning."

When they entered the cottage, Lisbeth was seated in her arm-chair, too
tired with setting out the evening meal, a task she always performed a
long time beforehand, to go and meet them at the door as usual, when she
heard the approaching footsteps.

"Coom, child, thee't coom at last," she said, when Dinah went towards
her. "What dost mane by lavin' me a week an' ne'er coomin' a-nigh me?"

"Dear friend," said Dinah, taking her hand, "you're not well. If I'd
known it sooner, I'd have come."

"An' how's thee t' know if thee dostna coom? Th' lads on'y know what
I tell 'em. As long as ye can stir hand and foot the men think ye're
hearty. But I'm none so bad, on'y a bit of a cold sets me achin'. An'
th' lads tease me so t' ha' somebody wi' me t' do the work--they make me
ache worse wi' talkin'. If thee'dst come and stay wi' me, they'd let me
alone. The Poysers canna want thee so bad as I do. But take thy bonnet
off, an' let me look at thee."

Dinah was moving away, but Lisbeth held her fast, while she was taking
off her bonnet, and looked at her face as one looks into a newly
gathered snowdrop, to renew the old impressions of purity and
gentleness.

"What's the matter wi' thee?" said Lisbeth, in astonishment; "thee'st
been a-cryin'."

"It's only a grief that'll pass away," said Dinah, who did not wish just
now to call forth Lisbeth's remonstrances by disclosing her intention
to leave Hayslope. "You shall know about it shortly--we'll talk of it
to-night. I shall stay with you to-night."

Lisbeth was pacified by this prospect. And she had the whole evening
to talk with Dinah alone; for there was a new room in the cottage,
you remember, built nearly two years ago, in the expectation of a new
inmate; and here Adam always sat when he had writing to do or plans to
make. Seth sat there too this evening, for he knew his mother would like
to have Dinah all to herself.

There were two pretty pictures on the two sides of the wall in the
cottage. On one side there was the broad-shouldered, large-featured,
hardy old woman, in her blue jacket and buff kerchief, with her dim-eyed
anxious looks turned continually on the lily face and the slight form
in the black dress that were either moving lightly about in helpful
activity, or seated close by the old woman's arm-chair, holding her
withered hand, with eyes lifted up towards her to speak a language which
Lisbeth understood far better than the Bible or the hymn-book. She would
scarcely listen to reading at all to-night. "Nay, nay, shut the book,"
she said. "We mun talk. I want t' know what thee was cryin' about. Hast
got troubles o' thy own, like other folks?"

On the other side of the wall there were the two brothers so like each
other in the midst of their unlikeness: Adam with knit brows, shaggy
hair, and dark vigorous colour, absorbed in his "figuring"; Seth, with
large rugged features, the close copy of his brother's, but with thin,
wavy, brown hair and blue dreamy eyes, as often as not looking vaguely
out of the window instead of at his book, although it was a newly bought
book--Wesley's abridgment of Madame Guyon's life, which was full of
wonder and interest for him. Seth had said to Adam, "Can I help thee
with anything in here to-night? I don't want to make a noise in the
shop."

"No, lad," Adam answered, "there's nothing but what I must do myself.
Thee'st got thy new book to read."

And often, when Seth was quite unconscious, Adam, as he paused after
drawing a line with his ruler, looked at his brother with a kind smile
dawning in his eyes. He knew "th' lad liked to sit full o' thoughts he
could give no account of; they'd never come t' anything, but they made
him happy," and in the last year or so, Adam had been getting more and
more indulgent to Seth. It was part of that growing tenderness which
came from the sorrow at work within him.

For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, working hard and
delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable nature, had not
outlived his sorrow--had not felt it slip from him as a temporary
burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God forbid. It
would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won
nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could return to the
same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts
of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives,
the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth
irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that
our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its
form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy--the one poor
word which includes all our best insight and our best love. Not that
this transformation of pain into sympathy had completely taken place
in Adam yet. There was still a great remnant of pain, and this he felt
would subsist as long as her pain was not a memory, but an existing
thing, which he must think of as renewed with the light of every
new morning. But we get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain,
without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it. It becomes a habit
of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease
as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission, and we are
contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in
silence and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at such periods
that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations,
beyond any of which either our present or prospective self is the
centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and exert.

That was Adam's state of mind in this second autumn of his sorrow. His
work, as you know, had always been part of his religion, and from very
early days he saw clearly that good carpentry was God's will--was that
form of God's will that most immediately concerned him. But now there
was no margin of dreams for him beyond this daylight reality, no
holiday-time in the working-day world, no moment in the distance when
duty would take off her iron glove and breast-plate and clasp him gently
into rest. He conceived no picture of the future but one made up of
hard-working days such as he lived through, with growing contentment and
intensity of interest, every fresh week. Love, he thought, could never
be anything to him but a living memory--a limb lopped off, but not gone
from consciousness. He did not know that the power of loving was all the
while gaining new force within him; that the new sensibilities bought by
a deep experience were so many new fibres by which it was possible, nay,
necessary to him, that his nature should intertwine with another. Yet he
was aware that common affection and friendship were more precious to him
than they used to be--that he clung more to his mother and Seth, and
had an unspeakable satisfaction in the sight or imagination of any small
addition to their happiness. The Poysers, too--hardly three or four days
passed but he felt the need of seeing them and interchanging words and
looks of friendliness with them. He would have felt this, probably, even
if Dinah had not been with them, but he had only said the simplest truth
in telling Dinah that he put her above all other friends in the world.
Could anything be more natural? For in the darkest moments of memory the
thought of her always came as the first ray of returning comfort. The
early days of gloom at the Hall Farm had been gradually turned into soft
moonlight by her presence; and in the cottage, too, for she had come
at every spare moment to soothe and cheer poor Lisbeth, who had been
stricken with a fear that subdued even her querulousness at the sight of
her darling Adam's grief-worn face. He had become used to watching her
light quiet movements, her pretty loving ways to the children, when he
went to the Hall Farm; to listen for her voice as for a recurrent music;
to think everything she said and did was just right, and could not have
been better. In spite of his wisdom, he could not find fault with her
for her overindulgence of the children, who had managed to convert Dinah
the preacher, before whom a circle of rough men had often trembled a
little, into a convenient household slave--though Dinah herself was
rather ashamed of this weakness, and had some inward conflict as to her
departure from the precepts of Solomon. Yes, there was one thing that
might have been better; she might have loved Seth and consented to marry
him. He felt a little vexed, for his brother's sake, and he could not
help thinking regretfully how Dinah, as Seth's wife, would have made
their home as happy as it could be for them all--how she was the one
being that would have soothed their mother's last days into peacefulness
and rest.

"It's wonderful she doesn't love th' lad," Adam had said sometimes to
himself, "for anybody 'ud think he was just cut out for her. But her
heart's so taken up with other things. She's one o' those women that
feel no drawing towards having a husband and children o' their own. She
thinks she should be filled up with her own life then, and she's been
used so to living in other folks's cares, she can't bear the thought of
her heart being shut up from 'em. I see how it is, well enough. She's
cut out o' different stuff from most women: I saw that long ago. She's
never easy but when she's helping somebody, and marriage 'ud interfere
with her ways--that's true. I've no right to be contriving and thinking
it 'ud be better if she'd have Seth, as if I was wiser than she is--or
than God either, for He made her what she is, and that's one o' the
greatest blessings I've ever had from His hands, and others besides me."

This self-reproof had recurred strongly to Adam's mind when he gathered
from Dinah's face that he had wounded her by referring to his wish
that she had accepted Seth, and so he had endeavoured to put into the
strongest words his confidence in her decision as right--his resignation
even to her going away from them and ceasing to make part of their life
otherwise than by living in their thoughts, if that separation were
chosen by herself. He felt sure she knew quite well enough how much
he cared to see her continually--to talk to her with the silent
consciousness of a mutual great remembrance. It was not possible she
should hear anything but self-renouncing affection and respect in
his assurance that he was contented for her to go away; and yet there
remained an uneasy feeling in his mind that he had not said quite the
right thing--that, somehow, Dinah had not understood him.

Dinah must have risen a little before the sun the next morning, for she
was downstairs about five o'clock. So was Seth, for, through Lisbeth's
obstinate refusal to have any woman-helper in the house, he had learned
to make himself, as Adam said, "very handy in the housework," that he
might save his mother from too great weariness; on which ground I hope
you will not think him unmanly, any more than you can have thought the
gallant Colonel Bath unmanly when he made the gruel for his invalid
sister. Adam, who had sat up late at his writing, was still asleep,
and was not likely, Seth said, to be down till breakfast-time. Often as
Dinah had visited Lisbeth during the last eighteen months, she had never
slept in the cottage since that night after Thias's death, when, you
remember, Lisbeth praised her deft movements and even gave a modified
approval to her porridge. But in that long interval Dinah had made great
advances in household cleverness, and this morning, since Seth was there
to help, she was bent on bringing everything to a pitch of cleanliness
and order that would have satisfied her Aunt Poyser. The cottage was far
from that standard at present, for Lisbeth's rheumatism had forced her
to give up her old habits of dilettante scouring and polishing. When the
kitchen was to her mind, Dinah went into the new room, where Adam had
been writing the night before, to see what sweeping and dusting were
needed there. She opened the window and let in the fresh morning air,
and the smell of the sweet-brier, and the bright low-slanting rays of
the early sun, which made a glory about her pale face and pale auburn
hair as she held the long brush, and swept, singing to herself in a very
low tone--like a sweet summer murmur that you have to listen for very
closely--one of Charles Wesley's hymns:

     Eternal Beam of Light Divine,
     Fountain of unexhausted love,
     In whom the Father's glories shine,
     Through earth beneath and heaven above;

     Jesus! the weary wanderer's rest,
     Give me thy easy yoke to bear;
     With steadfast patience arm my breast,
     With spotless love and holy fear.

     Speak to my warring passions, "Peace!"
     Say to my trembling heart, "Be still!"
     Thy power my strength and fortress is,
     For all things serve thy sovereign will.

She laid by the brush and took up the duster; and if you had ever lived
in Mrs. Poyser's household, you would know how the duster behaved in
Dinah's hand--how it went into every small corner, and on every ledge
in and out of sight--how it went again and again round every bar of the
chairs, and every leg, and under and over everything that lay on the
table, till it came to Adam's papers and rulers and the open desk near
them. Dinah dusted up to the very edge of these and then hesitated,
looking at them with a longing but timid eye. It was painful to see
how much dust there was among them. As she was looking in this way, she
heard Seth's step just outside the open door, towards which her back
was turned, and said, raising her clear treble, "Seth, is your brother
wrathful when his papers are stirred?"

"Yes, very, when they are not put back in the right places," said a deep
strong voice, not Seth's.

It was as if Dinah had put her hands unawares on a vibrating chord.
She was shaken with an intense thrill, and for the instant felt nothing
else; then she knew her cheeks were glowing, and dared not look round,
but stood still, distressed because she could not say good-morning in a
friendly way. Adam, finding that she did not look round so as to see
the smile on his face, was afraid she had thought him serious about his
wrathfulness, and went up to her, so that she was obliged to look at
him.

"What! You think I'm a cross fellow at home, Dinah?" he said, smilingly.

"Nay," said Dinah, looking up with timid eyes, "not so. But you might
be put about by finding things meddled with; and even the man Moses, the
meekest of men, was wrathful sometimes."

"Come, then," said Adam, looking at her affectionately, "I'll help you
move the things, and put 'em back again, and then they can't get wrong.
You're getting to be your aunt's own niece, I see, for particularness."

They began their little task together, but Dinah had not recovered
herself sufficiently to think of any remark, and Adam looked at her
uneasily. Dinah, he thought, had seemed to disapprove him somehow
lately; she had not been so kind and open to him as she used to be.
He wanted her to look at him, and be as pleased as he was himself with
doing this bit of playful work. But Dinah did not look at him--it was
easy for her to avoid looking at the tall man--and when at last there
was no more dusting to be done and no further excuse for him to linger
near her, he could bear it no longer, and said, in rather a pleading
tone, "Dinah, you're not displeased with me for anything, are you? I've
not said or done anything to make you think ill of me?"

The question surprised her, and relieved her by giving a new course to
her feeling. She looked up at him now, quite earnestly, almost with the
tears coming, and said, "Oh, no, Adam! how could you think so?"

"I couldn't bear you not to feel as much a friend to me as I do to you,"
said Adam. "And you don't know the value I set on the very thought of
you, Dinah. That was what I meant yesterday, when I said I'd be content
for you to go, if you thought right. I meant, the thought of you was
worth so much to me, I should feel I ought to be thankful, and not
grumble, if you see right to go away. You know I do mind parting with
you, Dinah?"

"Yes, dear friend," said Dinah, trembling, but trying to speak calmly,
"I know you have a brother's heart towards me, and we shall often be
with one another in spirit; but at this season I am in heaviness through
manifold temptations. You must not mark me. I feel called to leave my
kindred for a while; but it is a trial--the flesh is weak."

Adam saw that it pained her to be obliged to answer.

"I hurt you by talking about it, Dinah," he said. "I'll say no more.
Let's see if Seth's ready with breakfast now."

That is a simple scene, reader. But it is almost certain that you, too,
have been in love--perhaps, even, more than once, though you may not
choose to say so to all your feminine friends. If so, you will no more
think the slight words, the timid looks, the tremulous touches, by which
two human souls approach each other gradually, like two little quivering
rain-streams, before they mingle into one--you will no more think these
things trivial than you will think the first-detected signs of coming
spring trivial, though they be but a faint indescribable something
in the air and in the song of the birds, and the tiniest perceptible
budding on the hedge-row branches. Those slight words and looks and
touches are part of the soul's language; and the finest language,
I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as "light,"
"sound," "stars," "music"--words really not worth looking at, or
hearing, in themselves, any more than "chips" or "sawdust." It is only
that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and
beautiful. I am of opinion that love is a great and beautiful thing too,
and if you agree with me, the smallest signs of it will not be chips and
sawdust to you: they will rather be like those little words, "light" and
"music," stirring the long-winding fibres of your memory and enriching
your present with your most precious past.

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

completion: Adam and Dinah approach the Bede cottage. They're talking, mostly about Dinah's desire to do good works and "find the fullness of the Divine Presence" . Not quite a lovers' topic, but what can you do? But when Adam talks of what a blessing Dinah's company is, the poor lass blushes to "a deep rose-colour" . Still, they talk of distant things, Arthur's self-imposed exile, the stories in the Bible and which ones they like best. Soon they're at the cottage. Now, don't get us wrong, Lisbeth couldn't be happier to see Dinah. Yet she's a sharp old bird; she notices that Dinah's "been a-cryin'" . But instead of interrogating Dinah, she kindly and quietly takes Dinah's hand in hers. While they're having their heart-to-heart, Adam and Seth are sitting in another part of the house. Adam is working at his plans and "figures." What else can he do? He's convinced that his chance at happiness has fled, that there is no future for him "but one made up of hard-working days such as he lived through" . Yet Adam's mind wanders to Dinah and "his wish that she had accepted Seth" . If Adam is still melancholy about this, just imagine how Seth must feel. At 5:00 the next morning, Dinah is bustling about the house, "bringing everything to a pitch of cleanliness and order that would have satisfied her Aunt Poyser" . But she makes the mistake of trying to move some of Adam's papers. Seth, thank heavens, is there to warn her before Adam's beloved papers get completely mixed up. And Adam takes a jovial view of things when he comes down for breakfast. Adam helps Dinah tidy up a little. He's decided to "say no more" about their love, which is becoming a painful subject . And yet, Eliot's narrator intrudes to tell us all that "love is a great and beautiful thing" that has its beginnings in tiny moments . Like this one, Adam and Dinah cleaning up some papers.


prompt:
Chapter: LISBETH'S touch of rheumatism could not be made to appear serious enough
to detain Dinah another night from the Hall Farm, now she had made up
her mind to leave her aunt so soon, and at evening the friends must
part. "For a long while," Dinah had said, for she had told Lisbeth of
her resolve.

"Then it'll be for all my life, an' I shall ne'er see thee again," said
Lisbeth. "Long while! I'n got no long while t' live. An' I shall be
took bad an' die, an' thee canst ne'er come a-nigh me, an' I shall die
a-longing for thee."

That had been the key-note of her wailing talk all day; for Adam was not
in the house, and so she put no restraint on her complaining. She had
tried poor Dinah by returning again and again to the question, why
she must go away; and refusing to accept reasons, which seemed to her
nothing but whim and "contrairiness"; and still more, by regretting that
she "couldna' ha' one o' the lads" and be her daughter.

"Thee couldstna put up wi' Seth," she said. "He isna cliver enough for
thee, happen, but he'd ha' been very good t' thee--he's as handy as can
be at doin' things for me when I'm bad, an' he's as fond o' the Bible
an' chappellin' as thee art thysen. But happen, thee'dst like a husband
better as isna just the cut o' thysen: the runnin' brook isna athirst
for th' rain. Adam 'ud ha' done for thee--I know he would--an' he might
come t' like thee well enough, if thee'dst stop. But he's as stubborn
as th' iron bar--there's no bending him no way but's own. But he'd be
a fine husband for anybody, be they who they will, so looked-on an' so
cliver as he is. And he'd be rare an' lovin': it does me good on'y a
look o' the lad's eye when he means kind tow'rt me."

Dinah tried to escape from Lisbeth's closest looks and questions by
finding little tasks of housework that kept her moving about, and as
soon as Seth came home in the evening she put on her bonnet to go. It
touched Dinah keenly to say the last good-bye, and still more to look
round on her way across the fields and see the old woman still standing
at the door, gazing after her till she must have been the faintest speck
in the dim aged eyes. "The God of love and peace be with them,"
Dinah prayed, as she looked back from the last stile. "Make them glad
according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted them, and the years
wherein they have seen evil. It is thy will that I should part from
them; let me have no will but thine."

Lisbeth turned into the house at last and sat down in the workshop near
Seth, who was busying himself there with fitting some bits of turned
wood he had brought from the village into a small work-box, which he
meant to give to Dinah before she went away.

"Thee't see her again o' Sunday afore she goes," were her first words.
"If thee wast good for anything, thee'dst make her come in again o'
Sunday night wi' thee, and see me once more."

"Nay, Mother," said Seth. "Dinah 'ud be sure to come again if she saw
right to come. I should have no need to persuade her. She only thinks it
'ud be troubling thee for nought, just to come in to say good-bye over
again."

"She'd ne'er go away, I know, if Adam 'ud be fond on her an' marry her,
but everything's so contrairy," said Lisbeth, with a burst of vexation.

Seth paused a moment and looked up, with a slight blush, at his mother's
face. "What! Has she said anything o' that sort to thee, Mother?" he
said, in a lower tone.

"Said? Nay, she'll say nothin'. It's on'y the men as have to wait till
folks say things afore they find 'em out."

"Well, but what makes thee think so, Mother? What's put it into thy
head?"

"It's no matter what's put it into my head. My head's none so hollow as
it must get in, an' nought to put it there. I know she's fond on him, as
I know th' wind's comin' in at the door, an' that's anoof. An' he might
be willin' to marry her if he know'd she's fond on him, but he'll ne'er
think on't if somebody doesna put it into's head."

His mother's suggestion about Dinah's feeling towards Adam was not quite
a new thought to Seth, but her last words alarmed him, lest she should
herself undertake to open Adam's eyes. He was not sure about Dinah's
feeling, and he thought he was sure about Adam's.

"Nay, Mother, nay," he said, earnestly, "thee mustna think o' speaking
o' such things to Adam. Thee'st no right to say what Dinah's feelings
are if she hasna told thee, and it 'ud do nothing but mischief to say
such things to Adam. He feels very grateful and affectionate toward
Dinah, but he's no thoughts towards her that 'ud incline him to make her
his wife, and I don't believe Dinah 'ud marry him either. I don't think
she'll marry at all."

"Eh," said Lisbeth, impatiently. "Thee think'st so 'cause she wouldna
ha' thee. She'll ne'er marry thee; thee mightst as well like her t' ha'
thy brother."

Seth was hurt. "Mother," he said, in a remonstrating tone, "don't think
that of me. I should be as thankful t' have her for a sister as thee
wouldst t' have her for a daughter. I've no more thoughts about myself
in that thing, and I shall take it hard if ever thee say'st it again."

"Well, well, then thee shouldstna cross me wi' sayin' things arena as I
say they are."

"But, Mother," said Seth, "thee'dst be doing Dinah a wrong by telling
Adam what thee think'st about her. It 'ud do nothing but mischief,
for it 'ud make Adam uneasy if he doesna feel the same to her. And I'm
pretty sure he feels nothing o' the sort."

"Eh, donna tell me what thee't sure on; thee know'st nought about it.
What's he allays goin' to the Poysers' for, if he didna want t' see her?
He goes twice where he used t' go once. Happen he knowsna as he wants
t' see her; he knowsna as I put salt in's broth, but he'd miss it pretty
quick if it warna there. He'll ne'er think o' marrying if it isna put
into's head, an' if thee'dst any love for thy mother, thee'dst put him
up to't an' not let her go away out o' my sight, when I might ha' her to
make a bit o' comfort for me afore I go to bed to my old man under the
white thorn."

"Nay, Mother," said Seth, "thee mustna think me unkind, but I should
be going against my conscience if I took upon me to say what Dinah's
feelings are. And besides that, I think I should give offence to Adam by
speaking to him at all about marrying; and I counsel thee not to do't.
Thee may'st be quite deceived about Dinah. Nay, I'm pretty sure, by
words she said to me last Sabbath, as she's no mind to marry."

"Eh, thee't as contrairy as the rest on 'em. If it war summat I didna
want, it 'ud be done fast enough."

Lisbeth rose from the bench at this, and went out of the workshop,
leaving Seth in much anxiety lest she should disturb Adam's mind about
Dinah. He consoled himself after a time with reflecting that, since
Adam's trouble, Lisbeth had been very timid about speaking to him on
matters of feeling, and that she would hardly dare to approach this
tenderest of all subjects. Even if she did, he hoped Adam would not take
much notice of what she said.

Seth was right in believing that Lisbeth would be held in restraint by
timidity, and during the next three days, the intervals in which she had
an opportunity of speaking to Adam were too rare and short to cause her
any strong temptation. But in her long solitary hours she brooded over
her regretful thoughts about Dinah, till they had grown very near that
point of unmanageable strength when thoughts are apt to take wing out
of their secret nest in a startling manner. And on Sunday morning, when
Seth went away to chapel at Treddleston, the dangerous opportunity came.

Sunday morning was the happiest time in all the week to Lisbeth, for
as there was no service at Hayslope church till the afternoon, Adam was
always at home, doing nothing but reading, an occupation in which she
could venture to interrupt him. Moreover, she had always a better dinner
than usual to prepare for her sons--very frequently for Adam and herself
alone, Seth being often away the entire day--and the smell of the roast
meat before the clear fire in the clean kitchen, the clock ticking in
a peaceful Sunday manner, her darling Adam seated near her in his best
clothes, doing nothing very important, so that she could go and stroke
her hand across his hair if she liked, and see him look up at her and
smile, while Gyp, rather jealous, poked his muzzle up between them--all
these things made poor Lisbeth's earthly paradise.

The book Adam most often read on a Sunday morning was his large pictured
Bible, and this morning it lay open before him on the round white deal
table in the kitchen; for he sat there in spite of the fire, because he
knew his mother liked to have him with her, and it was the only day in
the week when he could indulge her in that way. You would have liked to
see Adam reading his Bible. He never opened it on a weekday, and so he
came to it as a holiday book, serving him for history, biography, and
poetry. He held one hand thrust between his waistcoat buttons, and the
other ready to turn the pages, and in the course of the morning you
would have seen many changes in his face. Sometimes his lips moved in
semi-articulation--it was when he came to a speech that he could fancy
himself uttering, such as Samuel's dying speech to the people; then his
eyebrows would be raised, and the corners of his mouth would quiver a
little with sad sympathy--something, perhaps old Isaac's meeting with
his son, touched him closely; at other times, over the New Testament,
a very solemn look would come upon his face, and he would every now and
then shake his head in serious assent, or just lift up his hand and let
it fall again. And on some mornings, when he read in the Apocrypha, of
which he was very fond, the son of Sirach's keen-edged words would bring
a delighted smile, though he also enjoyed the freedom of occasionally
differing from an Apocryphal writer. For Adam knew the Articles quite
well, as became a good churchman.

Lisbeth, in the pauses of attending to her dinner, always sat opposite
to him and watched him, till she could rest no longer without going
up to him and giving him a caress, to call his attention to her. This
morning he was reading the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and Lisbeth
had been standing close by him for some minutes, stroking his hair,
which was smoother than usual this morning, and looking down at the
large page with silent wonderment at the mystery of letters. She was
encouraged to continue this caress, because when she first went up
to him, he had thrown himself back in his chair to look at her
affectionately and say, "Why, Mother, thee look'st rare and hearty this
morning. Eh, Gyp wants me t' look at him. He can't abide to think I love
thee the best." Lisbeth said nothing, because she wanted to say so many
things. And now there was a new leaf to be turned over, and it was
a picture--that of the angel seated on the great stone that has been
rolled away from the sepulchre. This picture had one strong association
in Lisbeth's memory, for she had been reminded of it when she first
saw Dinah, and Adam had no sooner turned the page, and lifted the book
sideways that they might look at the angel, than she said, "That's
her--that's Dinah."

Adam smiled, and, looking more intently at the angel's face, said, "It
is a bit like her; but Dinah's prettier, I think."

"Well, then, if thee think'st her so pretty, why arn't fond on her?"

Adam looked up in surprise. "Why, Mother, dost think I don't set store
by Dinah?"

"Nay," said Lisbeth, frightened at her own courage, yet feeling that
she had broken the ice, and the waters must flow, whatever mischief they
might do. "What's th' use o' settin' store by things as are thirty mile
off? If thee wast fond enough on her, thee wouldstna let her go away."

"But I've no right t' hinder her, if she thinks well," said Adam,
looking at his book as if he wanted to go on reading. He foresaw a
series of complaints tending to nothing. Lisbeth sat down again in the
chair opposite to him, as she said:

"But she wouldna think well if thee wastna so contrairy." Lisbeth dared
not venture beyond a vague phrase yet.

"Contrairy, mother?" Adam said, looking up again in some anxiety. "What
have I done? What dost mean?"

"Why, thee't never look at nothin', nor think o' nothin', but thy
figurin, an' thy work," said Lisbeth, half-crying. "An' dost think thee
canst go on so all thy life, as if thee wast a man cut out o' timber?
An' what wut do when thy mother's gone, an' nobody to take care on thee
as thee gett'st a bit o' victual comfortable i' the mornin'?"

"What hast got i' thy mind, Mother?" said Adam, vexed at this
whimpering. "I canna see what thee't driving at. Is there anything I
could do for thee as I don't do?"

"Aye, an' that there is. Thee might'st do as I should ha' somebody wi'
me to comfort me a bit, an' wait on me when I'm bad, an' be good to me."

"Well, Mother, whose fault is it there isna some tidy body i' th' house
t' help thee? It isna by my wish as thee hast a stroke o' work to do. We
can afford it--I've told thee often enough. It 'ud be a deal better for
us."

"Eh, what's the use o' talking o' tidy bodies, when thee mean'st one o'
th' wenches out o' th' village, or somebody from Treddles'on as I ne'er
set eyes on i' my life? I'd sooner make a shift an' get into my own
coffin afore I die, nor ha' them folks to put me in."

Adam was silent, and tried to go on reading. That was the utmost
severity he could show towards his mother on a Sunday morning. But
Lisbeth had gone too far now to check herself, and after scarcely a
minute's quietness she began again.

"Thee mightst know well enough who 'tis I'd like t' ha' wi' me. It isna
many folks I send for t' come an' see me. I reckon. An' thee'st had the
fetchin' on her times enow."

"Thee mean'st Dinah, Mother, I know," said Adam. "But it's no use
setting thy mind on what can't be. If Dinah 'ud be willing to stay at
Hayslope, it isn't likely she can come away from her aunt's house, where
they hold her like a daughter, and where she's more bound than she is to
us. If it had been so that she could ha' married Seth, that 'ud ha' been
a great blessing to us, but we can't have things just as we like in this
life. Thee must try and make up thy mind to do without her."

"Nay, but I canna ma' up my mind, when she's just cut out for thee; an'
nought shall ma' me believe as God didna make her an' send her there o'
purpose for thee. What's it sinnify about her bein' a Methody! It 'ud
happen wear out on her wi' marryin'."

Adam threw himself back in his chair and looked at his mother. He
understood now what she had been aiming at from the beginning of the
conversation. It was as unreasonable, impracticable a wish as she had
ever urged, but he could not help being moved by so entirely new an
idea. The chief point, however, was to chase away the notion from his
mother's mind as quickly as possible.

"Mother," he said, gravely, "thee't talking wild. Don't let me hear
thee say such things again. It's no good talking o' what can never be.
Dinah's not for marrying; she's fixed her heart on a different sort o'
life."

"Very like," said Lisbeth, impatiently, "very like she's none for
marr'ing, when them as she'd be willin' t' marry wonna ax her. I
shouldna ha' been for marr'ing thy feyther if he'd ne'er axed me; an'
she's as fond o' thee as e'er I war o' Thias, poor fellow."

The blood rushed to Adam's face, and for a few moments he was not quite
conscious where he was. His mother and the kitchen had vanished for him,
and he saw nothing but Dinah's face turned up towards his. It seemed
as if there were a resurrection of his dead joy. But he woke up very
speedily from that dream (the waking was chill and sad), for it would
have been very foolish in him to believe his mother's words--she could
have no ground for them. He was prompted to express his disbelief very
strongly--perhaps that he might call forth the proofs, if there were any
to be offered.

"What dost say such things for, Mother, when thee'st got no foundation
for 'em? Thee know'st nothing as gives thee a right to say that."

"Then I knowna nought as gi'es me a right to say as the year's turned,
for all I feel it fust thing when I get up i' th' morning. She isna fond
o' Seth, I reckon, is she? She doesna want to marry HIM? But I can see
as she doesna behave tow'rt thee as she daes tow'rt Seth. She makes no
more o' Seth's coming a-nigh her nor if he war Gyp, but she's all of a
tremble when thee't a-sittin' down by her at breakfast an' a-looking at
her. Thee think'st thy mother knows nought, but she war alive afore thee
wast born."

"But thee canstna be sure as the trembling means love?" said Adam
anxiously.

"Eh, what else should it mane? It isna hate, I reckon. An' what should
she do but love thee? Thee't made to be loved--for where's there a
straighter cliverer man? An' what's it sinnify her bein' a Methody? It's
on'y the marigold i' th' parridge."

Adam had thrust his hands in his pockets, and was looking down at the
book on the table, without seeing any of the letters. He was trembling
like a gold-seeker who sees the strong promise of gold but sees in the
same moment a sickening vision of disappointment. He could not trust his
mother's insight; she had seen what she wished to see. And yet--and yet,
now the suggestion had been made to him, he remembered so many things,
very slight things, like the stirring of the water by an imperceptible
breeze, which seemed to him some confirmation of his mother's words.

Lisbeth noticed that he was moved. She went on, "An' thee't find out
as thee't poorly aff when she's gone. Thee't fonder on her nor thee
know'st. Thy eyes follow her about, welly as Gyp's follow thee."

Adam could sit still no longer. He rose, took down his hat, and went out
into the fields.

The sunshine was on them: that early autumn sunshine which we should
know was not summer's, even if there were not the touches of yellow
on the lime and chestnut; the Sunday sunshine too, which has more than
autumnal calmness for the working man; the morning sunshine, which still
leaves the dew-crystals on the fine gossamer webs in the shadow of the
bushy hedgerows.

Adam needed the calm influence; he was amazed at the way in which
this new thought of Dinah's love had taken possession of him, with an
overmastering power that made all other feelings give way before the
impetuous desire to know that the thought was true. Strange, that till
that moment the possibility of their ever being lovers had never crossed
his mind, and yet now, all his longing suddenly went out towards that
possibility. He had no more doubt or hesitation as to his own wishes
than the bird that flies towards the opening through which the daylight
gleams and the breath of heaven enters.

The autumnal Sunday sunshine soothed him, but not by preparing him with
resignation to the disappointment if his mother--if he himself--proved
to be mistaken about Dinah. It soothed him by gentle encouragement of
his hopes. Her love was so like that calm sunshine that they seemed to
make one presence to him, and he believed in them both alike. And Dinah
was so bound up with the sad memories of his first passion that he was
not forsaking them, but rather giving them a new sacredness by loving
her. Nay, his love for her had grown out of that past: it was the noon
of that morning.

But Seth? Would the lad be hurt? Hardly; for he had seemed quite
contented of late, and there was no selfish jealousy in him; he had
never been jealous of his mother's fondness for Adam. But had he seen
anything of what their mother talked about? Adam longed to know this,
for he thought he could trust Seth's observation better than his
mother's. He must talk to Seth before he went to see Dinah, and, with
this intention in his mind, he walked back to the cottage and said to
his mother, "Did Seth say anything to thee about when he was coming
home? Will he be back to dinner?"

"Aye, lad, he'll be back for a wonder. He isna gone to Treddles'on. He's
gone somewhere else a-preachin' and a-prayin'."

"Hast any notion which way he's gone?" said Adam.

"Nay, but he aften goes to th' Common. Thee know'st more o's goings nor
I do."

Adam wanted to go and meet Seth, but he must content himself with
walking about the near fields and getting sight of him as soon as
possible. That would not be for more than an hour to come, for Seth
would scarcely be at home much before their dinner-time, which was
twelve o'clock. But Adam could not sit down to his reading again, and he
sauntered along by the brook and stood leaning against the stiles, with
eager intense eyes, which looked as if they saw something very vividly;
but it was not the brook or the willows, not the fields or the sky.
Again and again his vision was interrupted by wonder at the strength of
his own feeling, at the strength and sweetness of this new love--almost
like the wonder a man feels at the added power he finds in himself for
an art which he had laid aside for a space. How is it that the poets
have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our
later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best
which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their
deeper-rooted affections? The boy's flutelike voice has its own spring
charm; but the man should yield a richer deeper music.

At last, there was Seth, visible at the farthest stile, and Adam
hastened to meet him. Seth was surprised, and thought something unusual
must have happened, but when Adam came up, his face said plainly enough
that it was nothing alarming.

"Where hast been?" said Adam, when they were side by side.

"I've been to the Common," said Seth. "Dinah's been speaking the Word
to a little company of hearers at Brimstone's, as they call him. They're
folks as never go to church hardly--them on the Common--but they'll go
and hear Dinah a bit. She's been speaking with power this forenoon
from the words, 'I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance.' And there was a little thing happened as was pretty to see.
The women mostly bring their children with 'em, but to-day there was one
stout curly headed fellow about three or four year old, that I never saw
there before. He was as naughty as could be at the beginning while I was
praying, and while we was singing, but when we all sat down and Dinah
began to speak, th' young un stood stock still all at once, and began to
look at her with's mouth open, and presently he ran away from's mother
and went to Dinah, and pulled at her, like a little dog, for her to take
notice of him. So Dinah lifted him up and held th' lad on her lap, while
she went on speaking; and he was as good as could be till he went to
sleep--and the mother cried to see him."

"It's a pity she shouldna be a mother herself," said Adam, "so fond as
the children are of her. Dost think she's quite fixed against marrying,
Seth? Dost think nothing 'ud turn her?"

There was something peculiar in his brother's tone, which made Seth
steal a glance at his face before he answered.

"It 'ud be wrong of me to say nothing 'ud turn her," he answered. "But
if thee mean'st it about myself, I've given up all thoughts as she can
ever be my wife. She calls me her brother, and that's enough."

"But dost think she might ever get fond enough of anybody else to be
willing to marry 'em?" said Adam rather shyly.

"Well," said Seth, after some hesitation, "it's crossed my mind
sometimes o' late as she might; but Dinah 'ud let no fondness for the
creature draw her out o' the path as she believed God had marked out for
her. If she thought the leading was not from Him, she's not one to
be brought under the power of it. And she's allays seemed clear about
that--as her work was to minister t' others, and make no home for
herself i' this world."

"But suppose," said Adam, earnestly, "suppose there was a man as 'ud
let her do just the same and not interfere with her--she might do a good
deal o' what she does now, just as well when she was married as when
she was single. Other women of her sort have married--that's to say, not
just like her, but women as preached and attended on the sick and needy.
There's Mrs. Fletcher as she talks of."

A new light had broken in on Seth. He turned round, and laying his
hand on Adam's shoulder, said, "Why, wouldst like her to marry THEE,
Brother?"

Adam looked doubtfully at Seth's inquiring eyes and said, "Wouldst be
hurt if she was to be fonder o' me than o' thee?"

"Nay," said Seth warmly, "how canst think it? Have I felt thy trouble so
little that I shouldna feel thy joy?"

There was silence a few moments as they walked on, and then Seth said,
"I'd no notion as thee'dst ever think of her for a wife."

"But is it o' any use to think of her?" said Adam. "What dost say?
Mother's made me as I hardly know where I am, with what she's been
saying to me this forenoon. She says she's sure Dinah feels for me more
than common, and 'ud be willing t' have me. But I'm afraid she speaks
without book. I want to know if thee'st seen anything."

"It's a nice point to speak about," said Seth, "and I'm afraid o' being
wrong; besides, we've no right t' intermeddle with people's feelings
when they wouldn't tell 'em themselves."

Seth paused.

"But thee mightst ask her," he said presently. "She took no offence at
me for asking, and thee'st more right than I had, only thee't not in the
Society. But Dinah doesn't hold wi' them as are for keeping the Society
so strict to themselves. She doesn't mind about making folks enter the
Society, so as they're fit t' enter the kingdom o' God. Some o' the
brethren at Treddles'on are displeased with her for that."

"Where will she be the rest o' the day?" said Adam.

"She said she shouldn't leave the farm again to-day," said Seth,
"because it's her last Sabbath there, and she's going t' read out o' the
big Bible wi' the children."

Adam thought--but did not say--"Then I'll go this afternoon; for if I
go to church, my thoughts 'ull be with her all the while. They must sing
th' anthem without me to-day."

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

completion: As much as she'd love to have Dinah stay, Lisbeth is getting over her sickness. So she tries a different tactic. When the two of them are alone, Lisbeth starts talking about her sons. Take that Adam: "He'd be a fine husband for anybody, be they who they will" . Cough cough cough cough... But Dinah escapes this conversation, and leaves the house on good terms, leaving Lisbeth alone with Seth. But Lisbeth won't let the whole marriage topic go. She's convinced that Adam and Dinah are meant for each other, but Seth thinks otherwise: "He feels very grateful and affectionate toward Dinah, but he's no thoughts towards her that 'ud incline him to make her his wife" . Lisbeth's answer: Pssh! She's been reading the signs for quite some time, and Seth "know'st nought about it" . But no matter who's right, Adam isn't in much of a mood to talk about Dinah. He's "always at home, doing nothing but reading" . Lost in his head, it seems. One Sunday, Adam is reading his "large pictured Bible" . Lisbeth can't read a word, but she does notice that one of the illustrations looks just like Dinah. This gives Lisbeth an opening. She gives Adam an early-19th-century version of "Why don't you ask that pretty girl out?" And Adam gives her a 19th-century version of "Because she doesn't like me, mom, stop bothering me." But just try to make Lisbeth back down! She insists that Dinah is just right for marrying Adam, Methodism or no Methodism. Besides, who'll take care of Adam when Lisbeth is gone? So there it is, the marriage issue is out in the open. Adam needs some air. He heads out into the "autumnal Sunday sunshine" . Now Adam has a whole new set of problems to wrestle with. What if Dinah just keeps on rejecting him ? What will Seth think? Eliot decides to kill the drama on this last one, because here comes Seth himself, walking back from one of those Methodist meetings of his. Adam tries talk around the issues, asking Seth if Dinah "might ever get fond enough of anybody else to be willing to marry 'em" . But Seth hacks through all this fancy-talk. He's fine with having Dinah for a sister-in-law. He'd even feel joy. Adam then asks about Dinah's whereabouts and sets off to press his case. And Seth goes his own way, happy to know that he now holds the world record for "Most Friend-Zoned Character in a Victorian Novel."


prompt:
Chapter: IT was about three o'clock when Adam entered the farmyard and roused
Alick and the dogs from their Sunday dozing. Alick said everybody was
gone to church "but th' young missis"--so he called Dinah--but this
did not disappoint Adam, although the "everybody" was so liberal as
to include Nancy the dairymaid, whose works of necessity were not
unfrequently incompatible with church-going.

There was perfect stillness about the house. The doors were all closed,
and the very stones and tubs seemed quieter than usual. Adam heard the
water gently dripping from the pump--that was the only sound--and
he knocked at the house door rather softly, as was suitable in that
stillness.

The door opened, and Dinah stood before him, colouring deeply with the
great surprise of seeing Adam at this hour, when she knew it was his
regular practice to be at church. Yesterday he would have said to her
without any difficulty, "I came to see you, Dinah: I knew the rest were
not at home." But to-day something prevented him from saying that, and
he put out his hand to her in silence. Neither of them spoke, and yet
both wished they could speak, as Adam entered, and they sat down. Dinah
took the chair she had just left; it was at the corner of the table
near the window, and there was a book lying on the table, but it was not
open. She had been sitting perfectly still, looking at the small bit
of clear fire in the bright grate. Adam sat down opposite her, in Mr.
Poyser's three-cornered chair.

"Your mother is not ill again, I hope, Adam?" Dinah said, recovering
herself. "Seth said she was well this morning."

"No, she's very hearty to-day," said Adam, happy in the signs of Dinah's
feeling at the sight of him, but shy.

"There's nobody at home, you see," Dinah said; "but you'll wait. You've
been hindered from going to church to-day, doubtless."

"Yes," Adam said, and then paused, before he added, "I was thinking
about you: that was the reason."

This confession was very awkward and sudden, Adam felt, for he thought
Dinah must understand all he meant. But the frankness of the words
caused her immediately to interpret them into a renewal of his brotherly
regrets that she was going away, and she answered calmly, "Do not be
careful and troubled for me, Adam. I have all things and abound at
Snowfield. And my mind is at rest, for I am not seeking my own will in
going."

"But if things were different, Dinah," said Adam, hesitatingly. "If you
knew things that perhaps you don't know now...."

Dinah looked at him inquiringly, but instead of going on, he reached a
chair and brought it near the corner of the table where she was sitting.
She wondered, and was afraid--and the next moment her thoughts flew to
the past: was it something about those distant unhappy ones that she
didn't know?

Adam looked at her. It was so sweet to look at her eyes, which had now
a self-forgetful questioning in them--for a moment he forgot that he
wanted to say anything, or that it was necessary to tell her what he
meant.

"Dinah," he said suddenly, taking both her hands between his, "I love
you with my whole heart and soul. I love you next to God who made me."

Dinah's lips became pale, like her cheeks, and she trembled violently
under the shock of painful joy. Her hands were cold as death between
Adam's. She could not draw them away, because he held them fast.

"Don't tell me you can't love me, Dinah. Don't tell me we must part and
pass our lives away from one another."

The tears were trembling in Dinah's eyes, and they fell before she could
answer. But she spoke in a quiet low voice.

"Yes, dear Adam, we must submit to another Will. We must part."

"Not if you love me, Dinah--not if you love me," Adam said passionately.
"Tell me--tell me if you can love me better than a brother?"

Dinah was too entirely reliant on the Supreme guidance to attempt to
achieve any end by a deceptive concealment. She was recovering now from
the first shock of emotion, and she looked at Adam with simple sincere
eyes as she said, "Yes, Adam, my heart is drawn strongly towards you;
and of my own will, if I had no clear showing to the contrary, I could
find my happiness in being near you and ministering to you continually.
I fear I should forget to rejoice and weep with others; nay, I fear I
should forget the Divine presence, and seek no love but yours."

Adam did not speak immediately. They sat looking at each other in
delicious silence--for the first sense of mutual love excludes other
feelings; it will have the soul all to itself.

"Then, Dinah," Adam said at last, "how can there be anything contrary
to what's right in our belonging to one another and spending our lives
together? Who put this great love into our hearts? Can anything be
holier than that? For we can help one another in everything as is good.
I'd never think o' putting myself between you and God, and saying you
oughtn't to do this and you oughtn't to do that. You'd follow your
conscience as much as you do now."

"Yes, Adam," Dinah said, "I know marriage is a holy state for those who
are truly called to it, and have no other drawing; but from my childhood
upwards I have been led towards another path; all my peace and my joy
have come from having no life of my own, no wants, no wishes for myself,
and living only in God and those of his creatures whose sorrows and joys
he has given me to know. Those have been very blessed years to me, and I
feel that if I was to listen to any voice that would draw me aside from
that path, I should be turning my back on the light that has shone upon
me, and darkness and doubt would take hold of me. We could not bless
each other, Adam, if there were doubts in my soul, and if I yearned,
when it was too late, after that better part which had once been given
me and I had put away from me."

"But if a new feeling has come into your mind, Dinah, and if you love me
so as to be willing to be nearer to me than to other people, isn't that
a sign that it's right for you to change your life? Doesn't the love
make it right when nothing else would?"

"Adam, my mind is full of questionings about that; for now, since you
tell me of your strong love towards me, what was clear to me has become
dark again. I felt before that my heart was too strongly drawn towards
you, and that your heart was not as mine; and the thought of you had
taken hold of me, so that my soul had lost its freedom, and was becoming
enslaved to an earthly affection, which made me anxious and careful
about what should befall myself. For in all other affection I had been
content with any small return, or with none; but my heart was beginning
to hunger after an equal love from you. And I had no doubt that I must
wrestle against that as a great temptation, and the command was clear
that I must go away."

"But now, dear, dear Dinah, now you know I love you better than you love
me...it's all different now. You won't think o' going. You'll stay, and
be my dear wife, and I shall thank God for giving me my life as I never
thanked him before."

"Adam, it's hard to me to turn a deaf ear...you know it's hard; but a
great fear is upon me. It seems to me as if you were stretching out your
arms to me, and beckoning me to come and take my ease and live for my
own delight, and Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, was standing looking towards
me, and pointing to the sinful, and suffering, and afflicted. I have
seen that again and again when I have been sitting in stillness and
darkness, and a great terror has come upon me lest I should become hard,
and a lover of self, and no more bear willingly the Redeemer's cross."

Dinah had closed her eyes, and a faint shudder went through her. "Adam,"
she went on, "you wouldn't desire that we should seek a good through
any unfaithfulness to the light that is in us; you wouldn't believe that
could be a good. We are of one mind in that."

"Yes, Dinah," said Adam sadly, "I'll never be the man t' urge you
against your conscience. But I can't give up the hope that you may come
to see different. I don't believe your loving me could shut up your
heart--it's only adding to what you've been before, not taking away from
it. For it seems to me it's the same with love and happiness as with
sorrow--the more we know of it the better we can feel what other
people's lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to
'em, and wishful to help 'em. The more knowledge a man has, the better
he'll do's work; and feeling's a sort o' knowledge."

Dinah was silent; her eyes were fixed in contemplation of something
visible only to herself. Adam went on presently with his pleading, "And
you can do almost as much as you do now. I won't ask you to go to church
with me of a Sunday. You shall go where you like among the people, and
teach 'em; for though I like church best, I don't put my soul above
yours, as if my words was better for you to follow than your own
conscience. And you can help the sick just as much, and you'll have more
means o' making 'em a bit comfortable; and you'll be among all your
own friends as love you, and can help 'em and be a blessing to 'em till
their dying day. Surely, Dinah, you'd be as near to God as if you was
living lonely and away from me."

Dinah made no answer for some time. Adam was still holding her hands and
looking at her with almost trembling anxiety, when she turned her grave
loving eyes on his and said, in rather a sad voice, "Adam there is truth
in what you say, and there's many of the brethren and sisters who have
greater strength than I have, and find their hearts enlarged by the
cares of husband and kindred. But I have not faith that it would be so
with me, for since my affections have been set above measure on you, I
have had less peace and joy in God. I have felt as it were a division
in my heart. And think how it is with me, Adam. That life I have led is
like a land I have trodden in blessedness since my childhood; and if
I long for a moment to follow the voice which calls me to another land
that I know not, I cannot but fear that my soul might hereafter yearn
for that early blessedness which I had forsaken; and where doubt enters
there is not perfect love. I must wait for clearer guidance. I must go
from you, and we must submit ourselves entirely to the Divine Will.
We are sometimes required to lay our natural lawful affections on the
altar."

Adam dared not plead again, for Dinah's was not the voice of caprice or
insincerity. But it was very hard for him; his eyes got dim as he looked
at her.

"But you may come to feel satisfied...to feel that you may come to me
again, and we may never part, Dinah?"

"We must submit ourselves, Adam. With time, our duty will be made clear.
It may be when I have entered on my former life, I shall find all these
new thoughts and wishes vanish, and become as things that were not. Then
I shall know that my calling is not towards marriage. But we must wait."

"Dinah," said Adam mournfully, "you can't love me so well as I love you,
else you'd have no doubts. But it's natural you shouldn't, for I'm not
so good as you. I can't doubt it's right for me to love the best thing
God's ever given me to know."

"Nay, Adam. It seems to me that my love for you is not weak, for my
heart waits on your words and looks, almost as a little child waits on
the help and tenderness of the strong on whom it depends. If the thought
of you took slight hold of me, I should not fear that it would be an
idol in the temple. But you will strengthen me--you will not hinder me
in seeking to obey to the uttermost."

"Let us go out into the sunshine, Dinah, and walk together. I'll speak
no word to disturb you."

They went out and walked towards the fields, where they would meet the
family coming from church. Adam said, "Take my arm, Dinah," and she took
it. That was the only change in their manner to each other since they
were last walking together. But no sadness in the prospect of her going
away--in the uncertainty of the issue--could rob the sweetness from
Adam's sense that Dinah loved him. He thought he would stay at the Hall
Farm all that evening. He would be near her as long as he could.

"Hey-day! There's Adam along wi' Dinah," said Mr. Poyser, as he opened
the far gate into the Home Close. "I couldna think how he happened away
from church. Why," added good Martin, after a moment's pause, "what dost
think has just jumped into my head?"

"Summat as hadna far to jump, for it's just under our nose. You mean as
Adam's fond o' Dinah."

"Aye! hast ever had any notion of it before?"

"To be sure I have," said Mrs. Poyser, who always declined, if possible,
to be taken by surprise. "I'm not one o' those as can see the cat i' the
dairy an' wonder what she's come after."

"Thee never saidst a word to me about it."

"Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the
wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i'
speaking."

"But Dinah 'll ha' none o' him. Dost think she will?"

"Nay," said Mrs. Poyser, not sufficiently on her guard against a
possible surprise, "she'll never marry anybody, if he isn't a Methodist
and a cripple."

"It 'ud ha' been a pretty thing though for 'em t' marry," said Martin,
turning his head on one side, as if in pleased contemplation of his new
idea. "Thee'dst ha' liked it too, wouldstna?"

"Ah! I should. I should ha' been sure of her then, as she wouldn't
go away from me to Snowfield, welly thirty mile off, and me not got a
creatur to look to, only neighbours, as are no kin to me, an' most of
'em women as I'd be ashamed to show my face, if my dairy things war like
their'n. There may well be streaky butter i' the market. An' I should be
glad to see the poor thing settled like a Christian woman, with a
house of her own over her head; and we'd stock her well wi' linen and
feathers, for I love her next to my own children. An' she makes one feel
safer when she's i' the house, for she's like the driven snow: anybody
might sin for two as had her at their elbow."

"Dinah," said Tommy, running forward to meet her, "mother says you'll
never marry anybody but a Methodist cripple. What a silly you must be!"
a comment which Tommy followed up by seizing Dinah with both arms, and
dancing along by her side with incommodious fondness.

"Why, Adam, we missed you i' the singing to-day," said Mr. Poyser. "How
was it?"

"I wanted to see Dinah--she's going away so soon," said Adam.

"Ah, lad! Can you persuade her to stop somehow? Find her a good husband
somewhere i' the parish. If you'll do that, we'll forgive you for
missing church. But, anyway, she isna going before the harvest supper
o' Wednesday, and you must come then. There's Bartle Massey comin', an'
happen Craig. You'll be sure an' come, now, at seven? The missis wunna
have it a bit later."

"Aye," said Adam, "I'll come if I can. But I can't often say what I'll
do beforehand, for the work often holds me longer than I expect. You'll
stay till the end o' the week, Dinah?"

"Yes, yes!" said Mr. Poyser. "We'll have no nay."

"She's no call to be in a hurry," observed Mrs. Poyser. "Scarceness
o' victual 'ull keep: there's no need to be hasty wi' the cooking. An'
scarceness is what there's the biggest stock of i' that country."

Dinah smiled, but gave no promise to stay, and they talked of other
things through the rest of the walk, lingering in the sunshine to look
at the great flock of geese grazing, at the new corn-ricks, and at the
surprising abundance of fruit on the old pear-tree; Nancy and Molly
having already hastened home, side by side, each holding, carefully
wrapped in her pocket-handkerchief, a prayer-book, in which she could
read little beyond the large letters and the Amens.

Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through the
fields from "afternoon church"--as such walks used to be in those old
leisurely times, when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, was
the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them old
brown-leather covers, and opened with remarkable precision always in one
place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the
pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the pedlars, who brought bargains
to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you,
perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure
for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager
thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for amusement;
prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and
exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps
through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He
only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from
that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a
contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet
perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know
the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly
in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of
sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they
were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under
the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling. He knew
nothing of weekday services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday
sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing; liking
the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest,
and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience,
broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or
port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty
aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure. He fingered the
guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners, and slept the sleep of the
irresponsible, for had he not kept up his character by going to church
on the Sunday afternoons?

Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe upon him, and judge him by our modern
standard. He never went to Exeter Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or
read Tracts for the Times or Sartor Resartus.

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

completion: Adam has arrived at the Hall Farm at "about three o'clock" . And everybody has gone to church, except for Dinah. He finds her inside. And they have one of those super-quiet, super-polite, super-awkward moments before Adam finally blurts out what he wants to. Adam loves Dinah with his "whole heart and soul. I love you next to the God who made me" . Wow. We knew he was a passionate guy, but still, wow. Dinah also loves Adam. Finally, it's all out in the open. But she also fears that she would "forget the Divine Presence, and seek no love but yours" if she marries Adam . She doesn't want to stop the whole traveling, preaching, charity bit, either. Adam persists. Loving him would only be "adding to what you've seen before, not taking away from it" . He'd even let her travel around. And the Methodism? No problem. Dinah still won't give in; so, instead of pressing the case, Adam decides to take her for an innocent walk. The Poysers are returning from church now, and the Mr. and Mrs. talk a little about the whole "Adam and Dinah" possibility. While standing at a respectful distance, of course. But why leave them to themselves? Mr. Poyser wants Dinah to find "a good husband i' the parish," and tells Adam as much . Hint hint, wink wink. Eliot, though, seems to think we've had enough machination for now. Chapter 52 concludes with a long passage in praise of the lazy Sunday afternoons they used to have "in those old leisurely times" . You could sit back, relax, and mull over a book like Adam Bede. Oh, wait: you still totally can.