How we cite our quotes: (Volume.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"I go there every four or five years—and I was born there—yet I do assure you, I often lose my way—aye, among the very piles of warehouses that are built upon my father's orchard." (2.19.64)
Mr. Bell assures us that his hometown of Milton used to be a place of farmer's fields and frolicking deer. But now when he goes home, he can barely recognize the place anymore because factories are built over the spot where his father's orchard used to be. Is that progress or is that destruction? Your call, Shmooper.
Quote #8
Over babbling brooks they took impossible leaps, which seemed to keep them whole days suspended in the air. (2.20.1)
Good ol' Helstone is just as Margaret left it. The only problem is that she's not the same person she was when she first moved to Milton. She no longer has the innocent outlook on life that she did when she was living in the natural wonder of Helstone. Now she's seen a different side to the world and a different side to humanity, and she needs to figure out a new way of approaching the world.
Quote #9
It hurt her to see Helstone road so flooded in the sun-light, and every turn and every familiar tree so precisely the same in its summer glory as it had been in former years. Nature felt no change, and was ever young. (2.21.1)
Margaret is pained by the thought that nature never changes, because it makes her realize just how sad it is that people get older and die (like her parents). Margaret has to deal with a lot of death in this book, and it's hard to face death when nature seems to be so unchanging and happy all the time.