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Copywork
About This Passage
Burnett pauses the confrontation on a sentence rhythm of three — hand, mouth, voice, all shaking — before diagnosing Ben as 'ignorant' and 'tactless.' The narrator is not mocking Ben. She is explaining why he keeps asking the wrong questions: he only knows what he has heard, and what he has heard is all rumor.
Ben Weatherstaff passed his hand over his forehead again and gazed as if he could never gaze enough. His hand shook and his mouth shook and his voice shook. He was an ignorant old man and a tactless o...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell Chapter 21 in your own words. Begin with the perfect afternoon under the plum-tree canopy, then the dead tree Colin almost notices, then the robin saving them and Dickon's thought that Mrs. Craven may be watching. Move on to tea on the grass, then the sudden appearance of Ben Weatherstaff's indignant face at the top of the wall, his harangue at Mary, and finally the confrontation in which Colin stands up for the first time and calls himself master of his own garden.
Discussion Questions
- When Colin asks about the dead tree with the broken branch, Mary and Dickon go quiet and the robin flies past at just the right moment. Why has Burnett placed the dead tree — the tree where Mrs. Craven actually fell ten years ago — in the middle of Colin's happiest afternoon? What is she teaching us about how old grief hides inside new joy at Misselthwaite?
- Dickon's mother thinks Mrs. Craven may be 'about Misselthwaite many a time lookin' after Mester Colin.' Mary privately thinks it was Magic that sent the robin just in time. Do Dickon and Mary believe the same thing, or different things, about what is protecting Colin in the garden?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Angry because something is unfair or wrong; Ben Weatherstaff's indignant face glares at Mary and Colin from the top of the ladder
Item 2
Scolded in a long angry speech; Ben Weatherstaff harangued Mary about being a scrawny buttermilk-faced young besom
Item 3
In a strong, firm, and brave way; Dickon said stoutly that Colin would walk and dig the same as other folks
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Critical Thinking
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