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Adam Bede George Eliot 10500K 2023-09-02

"No, Seth, no Make Mother go to bed, and go thyself"

Meanti so in her hands It was the brown-and-yellow platter containing the baked potatoes with the gravy in the them Those were dear times, heaten bread and freshpeople She set the dish down rather timidly on the bench by Adam's side and said, "Thee canst pick a bit while thee't workin' I'll bring thee another drop o' water"

"Aye, Mother, do," said Ada very thirsty"

In half an hour all was quiet; no sound was to be heard in the house but the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the ringing of Adaht was very still: when Adam opened the door to look out at twelve o'clock, the onlystars; every blade of grass was asleep

Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very ination; and it was so to-night with Ada lustily, his mind seemed as passive as a spectator at a diora before hi place one to the other in swift succession

He saould be to-, when he had carried the coffin to Broxton and was at ho his breakfast: his father perhaps would colance--would sit down, looking older anddown his head, exa the floor-quarries; while Lisbeth would ask hiot ready, that he had slinked off and left undone--for Lisbeth was always the first to utter the word of reproach, although she cried at Adao on, worsening and worsening," thought Ada still when once you 've begun to slip down" And then the day came back to him when he was a little fellow and used to run by his father's side, proud to be taken out to work, and prouder still to hear his father boasting to his felloorkmen how "the little chap had an unco" What a fine active fellow his father was then! When people asked Adam whose little lad he was, he had a sense of distinction as he answered, "I'm Thias Bede's lad" He was quite sure everybody knew Thias Bede--didn't he e? Those were happy days, especially when Seth, as three years the younger, began to go out working too, and Adaan to be a teacher as well as a learner But then came the days of sadness, when Adaan to loiter at the public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at ho of her sons Adauish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish, shouting a song out fitfully aon Overthrown" He had run away once when he was only eighteen, ht with a little blue bundle over his shoulder, and his " to himself very decidedly that he could bear the vexations of ho up his stick at the crossways and bending his steps the way it fell But by the tiht of hiswithout him, became too importunate, and his resolution failed him He came back the next day, but the h in those two days had haunted her ever since