Mr. Craig, the gardener at the Chase, was over head and ears in love with her,
and had lately made unmistakable avowals in luscious strawberries and
hyperbolical peas. She knew still better, that Adam Bede - tall, upright,
clever, brave Adam Bede - who carried such authority with all the people round
about, and whom her uncle was always delighted to see of an evening, saying that
»Adam knew a fine sight more o' the natur o' things than those as thought
themselves his betters« - she knew that this Adam, who was often rather stern to
other people, and not much given to run after the lasses, could be made to turn
pale or red any day by a word or a look from her. Hetty's sphere of comparison
was not large, but she couldn't help perceiving that Adam was »something like« a
man; always knew what to say about things, could tell her uncle how to prop the
hovel, and had mended the churn in no time; knew, with only looking at it, the
value of the chestnut tree that was blown down, and why the damp came in the
walls, and what they must do to stop the rats; and wrote a beautiful hand that
you could read off, and could do figures in his head - a degree of
accomplishment totally unknown among the richest farmers of that country-side.
Not at all like that slouching Luke Britton, who, when she once walked with him
all the way from Broxton to Hayslope, had only broken silence to remark that the
grey goose had begun to lay. And as for Mr. Craig, the gardener, he was a
sensible man enough, to be sure, but he was knock-kneed, and had a queer sort of
sing-song in his talk; moreover, on the most charitable supposition, he must be
far on the way to forty.
    Hetty was quite certain her uncle wanted her to encourage Adam, and would be
pleased for her to marry him. For those were times when there was no rigid
demarcation of rank between the farmer and the respectable artisan, and on the
home hearth, as well as in the public-house, they might be seen taking their jug
of ale together; the farmer having a latent sense of capital, and of weight in
parish affairs, which sustained him under his conspicuous inferiority in
conversation. Martin Poyser was not a frequenter of public-houses, but he liked
a friendly chat over his own home-brewed; and though it was pleasant to lay down
the law to