linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans — which is nourished on books of travel and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi — can hardly get a dim notion of what an old-fashioned man like Tulliver felt for this spot, where all his memories centred, and where life seemed like a familiar smooth-handled tool that the fingers clutch with loving ease. And just now he was living in that freshened memory of the far-off time which comes to us in the passive hours of recovery from sickness.
“Ay, Luke,” he said one afternoon,Mats Hummels Jersey, as he stood looking over the orchard gate, “I remember the day they planted those apple-trees. My father was a huge man for planting — it was like a merry-making to him to get a cart full o’ young trees; and I used to stand i’ the cold with him, and follow him about like a dog.”
Then he turned round, and leaning against the gate-post, looked at the opposite buildings.
“The old mill ‘ud miss me,Alexandre Lacazette Jersey, I think, Luke. There’s a story as when the mill changes hands, the river’s angry; I’ve heard my father say it many a time. There’s no telling whether there mayn’t be summat in the story, for this is a puzzling world, and Old Harry’s got a finger in it — it’s been too many for me, I know.”
“Ay,Guilherme Siqueira Jersey, sir,” said Luke, with soothing sympathy, “what wi’ the rust on the wheat, an’ the firin’ o’ the ricks an’ that, as I’ve seen i’ my time — things often looks comical; there’s the bacon fat wi’ our last pig run away like butter — it leaves nought but a scratchin’.”
“It’s just as if it was yesterday, now,Paco Alcacer Jersey,” Mr. Tulliver went on, “when my father began the malting. I remember,Ivan Vargic Jersey, the day they finished the malt-house,Joakim Nilsson Jersey, I thought summat great was to come of it; for we’d a plum-pudding that day and a bit of a feast, and I said to my mother — she was a fine dark-eyed woman, my mother was — the little wench ‘ull be as like her as two peas.” Here Mr. Tulliver put his stick between his legs, and took out his snuff-box, for the greater enjoyment of this anecdote,Eder Jersey, which dropped from him in fragments, as if he every other moment lost narration in vision. “I was a little chap no higher much than my mother’s knee — she was sore fond of us children, Gritty and me — and so I said to her, ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘shall we have plum-pudding every day because o’ the malt-house? She used to tell me o’ that till her dying day. She was but a young woman when she died, my mother was. But it’s forty good year since they finished the malt-house,Jordon Ibe Jersey, and it isn’t many days out of ’em all as I haven’t looked out into the yard there,Philipp Lahm Jersey, the first thing in the morning — all weathers,Ashlyn Harris Jersey, from year’s end to year’s end. I should go off my head in a new place. I should be like as if I’d lost my way. It’s all hard,Arda Turan Jersey, whichever way I look at it — the harness ‘ull gall me, but it ‘ud be summat to draw along the old road,England Jerseys, instead of a new un.”
“Ay, sir,” said L
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