Adam will get settled, now the poor old man’s
gone. He will only have his mother to keep in
future, and I’ve a notion that there’s
a kindness between him and that nice modest girl,
Mary Burge, from something that fell from old Jonathan
one day when I was talking to him. But when I
mentioned the subject to Adam he looked uneasy and
turned the conversation. I suppose the love-making
doesn’t run smooth, or perhaps Adam hangs back
till he’s in a better position. He has
independence of spirit enough for two men—rather
an excess of pride, if anything.”
“That would be a capital match for Adam.
He would slip into old Burge’s shoes and make
a fine thing of that building business, I’ll
answer for him. I should like to see him well
settled in this parish; he would be ready then to
act as my grand-vizier when I wanted one. We could
plan no end of repairs and improvements together.
I’ve never seen the girl, though, I think—at
least I’ve never looked at her.”
“Look at her next Sunday at church—she
sits with her father on the left of the reading-desk.
You needn’t look quite so much at Hetty Sorrel
then. When I’ve made up my mind that I can’t
afford to buy a tempting dog, I take no notice of
him, because if he took a strong fancy to me and looked
lovingly at me, the struggle between arithmetic and
inclination might become unpleasantly severe.
I pique myself on my wisdom there, Arthur, and as
an old fellow to whom wisdom had become cheap, I bestow
it upon you.”
“Thank you. It may stand me in good stead
some day though I don’t know that I have any
present use for it. Bless me! How the brook
has overflowed. Suppose we have a canter, now
we’re at the bottom of the hill.”
That is the great advantage of dialogue on horseback;
it can be merged any minute into a trot or a canter,
and one might have escaped from Socrates himself in
the saddle. The two friends were free from the
necessity of further conversation till they pulled
up in the lane behind Adam’s cottage.
Dinah Visits Lisbeth
At five o’clock Lisbeth came downstairs
with a large key in her hand: it was the key
of the chamber where her husband lay dead. Throughout
the day, except in her occasional outbursts of wailing
grief, she had been in incessant movement, performing
the initial duties to her dead with the awe and exactitude
that belong to religious rites. She had brought
out her little store of bleached linen, which she had
for long years kept in reserve for this supreme use.
It seemed but yesterday—that time so many
midsummers ago, when she had told Thias where this
linen lay, that he might be sure and reach it out
for her when she died, for she was the elder
of the two. Then there had been the work of cleansing
to the strictest purity every object in the sacred
chamber, and of removing from it every trace of common
daily occupation. The small window, which had
