Book 3 - Chapter 9 - Page 2

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, 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, 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, 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," Mr. Tulliver went on, "when
my father began the malting. I remember, the day they finished the
malt-house, 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, 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, and it isn't many days out of 'em all as I
haven't looked out into the yard there, the first thing in the
morning,--all weathers, 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