Page:Eliot - Adam Bede, vol. I, 1859.djvu/198

186 butter, and her head filled with these pictures of the morrow, Arthur Donnithorne, riding by Mr Irwine's side towards the valley of the Willow Brook, had also certain indistinct anticipations, running as an under-current in his mind while he was listening to Mr Irwine's account of Dinah;—indistinct, yet strong enough to make him feel rather conscious when Mr Irwine suddenly said,

"What fascinated you so in Mrs Poyser's dairy, Arthur? Have you become an amateur of damp quarries and skimming-dishes?"

Arthur knew the Rector too well to suppose that a clever invention would be of any use, so he said, with his accustomed frankness,

"No, I went to look at the pretty butter-maker, Hetty Sorrel. She's a perfect Hebe; and if I were an artist, I would paint her. It's amazing what pretty girls one sees among the farmers' daughters, when the men are such clowns. That common round red face one sees sometimes in the men—all cheek and no features, like Martin Poyser's—comes out in the women of the family as the most charming phiz imaginable."

"Well, I have no objection to your contemplating Hetty in an artistic light, but I must not have