in the right on’t to want him to go partners and marry his daughter, if it’s true what they say; the woman as marries him ’ull have a good take, be’t Lady day or Michaelmas,” a remark which Mrs. Poyser always followed up with her cordial assent.  “Ah,” she would say, “it’s all very fine having a ready-made rich man, but mayhappen he’ll be a ready-made fool; and it’s no use filling your pocket full o’ money if you’ve got a hole in the corner.  It’ll do you no good to sit in a spring-cart o’ your own, if you’ve got a soft to drive you:  he’ll soon turn you over into the ditch.  I allays said I’d never marry a man as had got no brains; for where’s the use of a woman having brains of her own if she’s tackled to a geck as everybody’s a-laughing at?  She might as well dress herself fine to sit back’ards on a donkey.”

These expressions, though figurative, sufficiently indicated the bent of Mrs. Poyser’s mind with regard to Adam; and though she and her husband might have viewed the subject differently if Hetty had been a daughter of their own, it was clear that they would have welcomed the match with Adam for a penniless niece.  For what could Hetty have been but a servant elsewhere, if her uncle had not taken her in and brought her up as a domestic help to her aunt, whose health since the birth of Totty had not been equal to more positive labour than the superintendence of servants and children?  But Hetty had never given Adam any steady encouragement.  Even in the moments when she was most thoroughly conscious of his superiority to her other admirers, she had never brought herself to think of accepting him.  She liked to feel that this strong, skilful, keen-eyed man was in her power, and would have been indignant if he had shown the least sign of slipping from under the yoke of her coquettish tyranny and attaching himself to the gentle Mary Burge, who would have been grateful enough for the most trifling notice from him.  “Mary Burge, indeed!  Such a sallow-faced girl:  if she put on a bit of pink ribbon, she looked as yellow as a crow-flower and her hair was as straight as a hank of cotton.”  And always when Adam stayed away for several weeks from the Hall Farm, and otherwise made some show of resistance to his passion as a foolish one, Hetty took care to entice him back into the net by little airs of meekness and timidity, as if she were in trouble at his neglect.  But as to marrying Adam, that was a very different affair!  There was nothing in the world to tempt her to do that.  Her cheeks never grew a shade deeper when his name was mentioned; she felt no thrill when she saw him passing along the causeway by the window, or advancing towards her unexpectedly in the footpath across the meadow; she felt nothing, when his eyes rested on her, but the cold triumph of knowing that he loved her and would not care to look at Mary Burge.  He could no more stir in her the emotions that make the sweet intoxication of young love than the mere picture of a sun can stir the spring sap in the subtle