GEORGE ELIOR , Silas Marner. Part- 8, Chapter 8 the story

 

GEORGE ELIOR , Silas Marner. Part- 8, Chapter 8 the story

The silver bore no large proportion in amount to the gold, because the long pieces of linen which formed his chief work were always partly paid for in gold, and out of the silver he supplied his own bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and sixpences to spend in this way.

He loved the guineas best, but he would not change the silver-the crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings, begotten by his labour; he loved them all. He spread them out in heaps and bathed his hands in them: then he counted them and set them up in regular piles, and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were.

Only half earned by the work in his loom, as if they had thought of the guineas that been unborn children were coming slowly through the coming years, through all his life, which spread far away before him, the end quite hidden by countless days of weaving. 

No wonder his thoughts were still with his loom and his money when he made his journeys through the fields and the lanes to fetch and carry home his work, so that his steps never wandered to the hedge banks and the lane-side in search of the once familiar herbs: these too belonged to the past, from which his life had shrunk like a rivulet that has sunk far down from the grassy fringe of its old breadth into a little shivering thread, that cuts a groove for itself in the barren sand. away, a But about the Christmas of that fifteenth second great change came over Marner's life, and his history became blent in a singular manner with the life of his neighbours.

man in Raveloe was Squire Cass, who lived in the large red house with the handsome flight of stone steps in front and the high stables behind it, nearly opposite the church. He was only one among several landed parishioners, but he alone was honoured with the title of Squire; for though Mr Osgood's family was also understood to be of timeless origin the Raveloe imagination having never ventured back to that fearful blank when there were no Osgoods still, he merely owned the farm.he occupied; whereas Squire Cass had a tenant or two, who complained of the game to him quite as if he had been a lord.

It was still that glorious war-time which was felt to be a peculiar favour of Providence towards the landed interest, and the fall of prices had not yet come to carry the race of small squires and yeomen down that road to ruin for which extravagant habits and bad husbandry were plentifully anointing their wheels.

 I am speaking now in relation to Raveloe and the parishes that resembled it; for our old-fashioned country life had many different aspects, as all life must have when it is spread over a various surface, and breathed on variously by multitudinous currents, from the winds of heaven to the thoughts of men, which are for ever moving and crossing each other with incalculable results. 

Raveloe lay low among the bushy trees and the rutted lanes, aloof from the currents of industrial energy and Puritan earnestness: the rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respect- table families, and the poor thought that the rich were entirely in the right of it to lead a jolly life; besides, their feasting caused a multiplication of orts; which were the and the barrels of ale heirlooms of the poor. 

Betty Jay scented the boiling of Squire Cass's hams, but her longing was arrested by the unctuous liquor in which they were boiled; and when the seasons brought round the great merry-makings, they were regarded on all hands as a fine thing for the poor. 

For the Raveloe feasts were like the rounds of beef they were on a large scale, and lasted a good while, especially in the winter-time. After ladies had packed up their best gowns and top-knots in bandboxes, and had incurred the risk of fording streams on pillions with the precious burden in rainy or snowy weather, when there was no knowing how high the water would rise, it was not to be supposed that they looked forward to a brief pleasure. 

On this ground it was always contrived in the dark seasons, when there was little work to be done, and the hours were long, that several neighbours should keep open house in succe- ssion. 

So soon as Squire Cass's standing dishes dimini- shed in plenty and freshness, his guests had nothing to do but to walk a little higher up the village to Mr Osgood's, at the Orchards, and they found hams and chines uncut, pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them, spun butter in all its freshness-everything, in fact, that appetites at leisure could desire, in perhaps greater perfection, though not in greater abundance, than at Squire Cass's. 

For the Squire's wife had died long ago, and the Red House was without that presence of the wife and mother which is the fountain of wholesome love and fear in parlour and kitchen; and this helped to account not only for there being more profusion than finished excellence in the holiday provisions, but also for the frequency with which the proud Squire condescended to preside in the parlour of the Rainbow rather than under the shadow of  own dark ainscot: 

perhaps, also, for the fact that his  turmed out rather ill. Raveloe was not a place is Own dark where morat censure was severe bh a place was severe, but it was thought a where moral eakness in the Squire hat he had kept all his sonsat ness; and though some lieenee was to be me in idlene llowed to yourg men. whoSe fathers could afford it allo eople shook their heads at the courses of the second son. 

Durnstan, comnmony called Dnsey Cass whos taste for sSwoppirs and betang mght tum out to be a sowing ot somethinS worse than wikd oas. To be sure, the neighbours said, it was no matter what became of Dunsey-a spitetul jeerng tellow, who seemed to enjoy his drink the more when other people went dry always provided that his doings did not bring trouble on a family like Squire Cass's with a monument in the church, and tankards older than Kng Geonge But it would be a thousand pities it Mr Goadtrey, the eldest, a fine open-taced goOd-natured young man who was to come into the land some day, shoulki take to going along the same road with his brother, as he had semed to do of late. 

If he went on in that way, he would lose AMis Nancy Lammeter, for it was well known that she had looked very shyly on him ever since last Whitsuntide welvemonth, when there was so much talk about his being away from home days and days together. There was something wrong, more than common- that was quite clear; for Mr Godfrey didn't look halt so trest coloured and open as he used to do At one time everybody was saying what a handsonme coupe he and Miss Nancy Lammeter would make! and it she could come to be mistress at the Red House, there woulkd be a change, for the Lammeters had been brought up n hat way, that they never suffered a pnch of salt to be wasted, and yet everybody in their household had of the