generation of our peasant artisans—with
an inheritance of affections nurtured by a simple
family life of common need and common industry, and
an inheritance of faculties trained in skilful courageous
labour: they make their way upwards, rarely as
geniuses, most commonly as painstaking honest men,
with the skill and conscience to do well the tasks
that lie before them. Their lives have no discernible
echo beyond the neighbourhood where they dwelt, but
you are almost sure to find there some good piece
of road, some building, some application of mineral
produce, some improvement in farming practice, some
reform of parish abuses, with which their names are
associated by one or two generations after them.
Their employers were the richer for them, the work
of their hands has worn well, and the work of their
brains has guided well the hands of other men.
They went about in their youth in flannel or paper
caps, in coats black with coal-dust or streaked with
lime and red paint; in old age their white hairs are
seen in a place of honour at church and at market,
and they tell their well-dressed sons and daughters,
seated round the bright hearth on winter evenings,
how pleased they were when they first earned their
twopence a-day. Others there are who die poor
and never put off the workman’s coal on weekdays.
They have not had the art of getting rich, but they
are men of trust, and when they die before the work
is all out of them, it is as if some main screw had
got loose in a machine; the master who employed them
says, “Where shall I find their like?”
Chapter XX
Adam Visits the Hall Farm
Adam came back from his work in the empty waggon—that
was why he had changed his clothes—and
was ready to set out to the Hall Farm when it still
wanted a quarter to seven.
“What’s thee got thy Sunday cloose on
for?” said Lisbeth complainingly, as he came
downstairs. “Thee artna goin’ to th’
school i’ thy best coat?”
“No, Mother,” said Adam, quietly.
“I’m going to the Hall Farm, but mayhap
I may go to the school after, so thee mustna wonder
if I’m a bit late. Seth ’ull be at
home in half an hour—he’s only gone
to the village; so thee wutna mind.”
“Eh, an’ what’s thee got thy best
cloose on for to go to th’ Hall Farm? The
Poyser folks see’d thee in ’em yesterday,
I warrand. What dost mean by turnin’ worki’day
into Sunday a-that’n? It’s poor keepin’
company wi’ folks as donna like to see thee
i’ thy workin’ jacket.”
“Good-bye, mother, I can’t stay,”
said Adam, putting on his hat and going out.
But he had no sooner gone a few paces beyond the door
than Lisbeth became uneasy at the thought that she
had vexed him. Of course, the secret of her objection
to the best clothes was her suspicion that they were
put on for Hetty’s sake; but deeper than all
her peevishness lay the need that her son should love
her. She hurried after him, and laid hold of
his arm before he had got half-way down to the brook,
and said, “Nay, my lad, thee wutna go away angered
wi’ thy mother, an’ her got nought to
do but to sit by hersen an’ think on thee?”