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Copywork
About This Passage
The two paragraphs together rack up three Chapter 22 firsts: Colin perseveres through a new physical task (the first trowelfuls), speaks exultantly in Yorkshire dialect (ventriloquizing Dickon's speech register in the imperative tense — 'I'm walkin', I'm diggin''), and provokes Ben into his first unguarded laugh. The passage also shows Burnett's technique of stacking small firsts so the reader feels the accumulation, not the argument.
Colin persevered. After he had turned a few trowelfuls of soil he spoke exultantly to Dickon in his best Yorkshire. “Tha’ said as tha’d have me walkin’ about here same as other folk—an’ tha’ said tha’...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell Chapter 22 as the consolidation of Colin's recovery under three new witnesses: the crocuses Dickon points to, Ben Weatherstaff (who enters through the door instead of over the wall), and the planted rose. Trace the chapter's through-line from 'I can stand' to Colin standing laughing at sunset — but attend particularly to the intermediate revelations: Ben's years of secret pruning, Colin's first trowelful, and the transfer of the word 'king' from Colin's Rajah-register into Ben's gardening-register.
Discussion Questions
- Dickon's theology of Magic in this chapter — 'It's same Magic as made these 'ere work out o' th' earth' — refuses to distinguish the order of recovery for a human child from the order of growth for a plant. What does Burnett gain by flattening that distinction, and what kind of healing does the book therefore NOT have room for?
- Ben Weatherstaff's long-deferred revelation — that he climbed the wall annually for years at Mrs. Craven's deathbed request — arrives at Chapter 22, not at his introduction. Analyze Burnett's timing: what does the book's structure accomplish by withholding Ben's grief-fidelity until now, and how does it retroactively rewrite every scene in which Ben appeared gruff?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
continued steadily and determinedly in a course of action despite difficulty or exhaustion; Burnett uses it at the precise moment Colin refuses to stop turning trowelfuls of soil even though his hands are thin and weak
Item 2
in a manner filled with triumphant joy, often expressed openly and loudly; Colin speaks exultantly in his best Yorkshire when he boasts that he has walked and dug in a single day
Item 3
laughing quietly and inwardly, often with amused surprise rather than open mirth; Ben Weatherstaff ends by chuckling when Colin brags in dialect, the laugh marking his acceptance that the boy is truly well
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Critical Thinking
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