Middlemarch George Eliot (essential reading txt) 📖

celebrated educators, had her favorite ancient paths, and in a general wreck of society would have tried to hold her “Lindley Murray” above the waves.)

“Oh⁠—it means⁠—you must think what you mean,” said Ben, rather peevishly. “I hate grammar. What’s the use of it?”

“To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can be understood,” said Mrs. Garth, with severe precision. “Should you like to speak as old Job does?”

“Yes,” said Ben, stoutly; “it’s funnier. He says, ‘Yo goo’⁠—that’s just as good as ‘You go.’ ”

“But he says, ‘A ship’s in the garden,’ instead of ‘a sheep,’ ” said Letty, with an air of superiority. “You might think he meant a ship off the sea.”

“No, you mightn’t, if you weren’t silly,” said Ben. “How could a ship off the sea come there?”

“These things belong only to pronunciation, which is the least part of grammar,” said Mrs. Garth. “That apple-peel is to be eaten by the pigs, Ben; if you eat it, I must give them your piece of pasty. Job has only to speak about very plain things. How do you think you would write or speak about anything more difficult, if you knew no more of grammar than he does? You would use wrong words, and put words in the wrong places, and instead of making people understand you, they would turn away from you as a tiresome person. What would you do then?”

“I shouldn’t care, I should leave off,” said Ben, with a sense that this was an agreeable issue where grammar was concerned.

“I see you are getting tired and stupid, Ben,” said Mrs. Garth, accustomed to these obstructive arguments from her male offspring. Having finished her pies, she moved towards the clotheshorse, and said, “Come here and tell me the story I told you on Wednesday, about Cincinnatus.”

“I know! he was a farmer,” said Ben.

“Now, Ben, he was a Roman⁠—let me tell,” said Letty, using her elbow contentiously.

“You silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was ploughing.”

“Yes, but before that⁠—that didn’t come first⁠—people wanted him,” said Letty.

“Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first,” insisted Ben. “He was a wise man, like my father, and that made the people want his advice. And he was a brave man, and could fight. And so could my father⁠—couldn’t he, mother?”

“Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us,” said Letty, frowning. “Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak.”

“Letty, I am ashamed of you,” said her mother, wringing out the caps from the tub. “When your brother began, you ought to have waited to see if he could not tell the story. How rude you look, pushing and frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows! Cincinnatus, I am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter behave so.” (Mrs. Garth delivered this awful sentence with much majesty of enunciation, and Letty felt that between repressed volubility and general disesteem, that of the Romans inclusive, life was already a painful affair.) “Now, Ben.”

“Well⁠—oh⁠—well⁠—why, there was a great deal of fighting, and they were all blockheads, and⁠—I can’t tell it just how you told it⁠—but they wanted a man to be captain and king and everything⁠—”

“Dictator, now,” said Letty, with injured looks, and not without a wish to make her mother repent.

“Very well, dictator!” said Ben, contemptuously. “But that isn’t a good word: he didn’t tell them to write on slates.”

“Come, come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that,” said Mrs. Garth, carefully serious. “Hark, there is a knock at the door! Run, Letty, and open it.”

The knock was Fred’s; and when Letty said that her father was not in yet, but that her mother was in the kitchen, Fred had no alternative. He could not depart from his usual practice of going to see Mrs. Garth in the kitchen if she happened to be at work there. He put his arm round Letty’s neck silently, and led her into the kitchen without his usual jokes and caresses.

Mrs. Garth was surprised to see Fred at this hour, but surprise was not a feeling that she was given to express, and she only said, quietly continuing her work⁠—

“You, Fred, so early in the day? You look quite pale. Has anything happened?”

“I want to speak to Mr. Garth,” said Fred, not yet ready to say more⁠—“and to you also,” he added, after a little pause, for he had no doubt that Mrs. Garth knew everything about the bill, and he must in the end speak of it before her, if not to her solely.

“Caleb will be in again in a few minutes,” said Mrs. Garth, who imagined some trouble between Fred and his father. “He is sure not to be long, because he has some work at his desk that must be done this morning. Do you mind staying with me, while I finish my matters here?”

“But we needn’t go on about Cincinnatus, need we?” said Ben, who had taken Fred’s whip out of his hand, and was trying its efficiency on the cat.

“No, go out now. But put that whip down. How very mean of you to whip poor old Tortoise! Pray take the whip from him, Fred.”

“Come, old boy, give it me,” said Fred, putting out his hand.

“Will you let me ride on your horse today?” said Ben, rendering up the whip, with an air of not being obliged to do it.

“Not today⁠—another time. I am not riding my own horse.”

“Shall you see Mary today?”

“Yes, I think so,” said Fred, with an unpleasant twinge.

“Tell her to come home soon, and play at forfeits, and make fun.”

“Enough, enough, Ben! run away,” said Mrs. Garth, seeing that Fred was teased.

“Are Letty and Ben your only pupils now, Mrs. Garth?” said Fred, when the children were gone and it was needful to say something that would pass the time. He was not yet sure whether he should wait for Mr. Garth, or use any good opportunity in conversation to confess to Mrs. Garth herself, give her the money and ride away.

“One⁠—only one. Fanny