← Even the stupidest of them had already picked up the tune and a few of the words, and as for the clever ones, such as the pigs and dogs, they had the entire song by heart within a few minutes. 🔊
← At last they could stand it no longer. One of the cows broke in the door of the store−shed with her horn and all the animals began to help themselves from the bins. 🔊
← "What is going to happen to all that milk?" said someone. "Jones used sometimes to mix some of it in our mash," said one of the hens. 🔊
← Boxer was the admiration of everybody. He had been a hard worker even in Jones's time, but now he seemed more like three horses than one; there were days when the entire work of the farm seemed to rest on his mighty shoulders. 🔊
← The animals had assumed as a matter of course that these would be shared out equally; one day, however, the order went forth that all the windfalls were to be collected and brought to the harness−room for the use of the pigs. 🔊
← Now if there was one thing that the animals were completely certain of, it was that they did not want Jones back. 🔊
← All the men were gone except one. Back in the yard Boxer was pawing with his hoof at the stable−lad who lay face down in the mud, trying to turn him over. 🔊
← One of Mr. Pilkington's men was standing on the other side of the hedge. 🔊
← The animals listened first to Napoleon, then to Snowball, and could not make up their minds which was right; indeed, they always found themselves in agreement with the one who was speaking at the moment. 🔊
← There was a good quarry of limestone on the farm, and plenty of sand and cement had been found in one of the outhouses, so that all the materials for building were at hand. 🔊
← One symptom of this was that they had begun to call Animal Farm by its proper name and ceased to pretend that it was called the Manor Farm. 🔊
← All this while no more had been seen of Snowball. He was rumoured to be hiding on one of the neighbouring farms, either Foxwood or Pinchfield. 🔊
← And though no one cared to mention it in the hearing of the pigs or the dogs, it was felt that the killings which had taken place did not square with this. 🔊
← But at this moment the four pigeons, who had been sent out on the day before, returned, one of them bearing a scrap of paper from Pilkington. 🔊
← With tears in their eyes they asked one another what they should do if their Leader were taken away from them. 🔊
← One night at about twelve o'clock there was a loud crash in the yard, and the animals rushed out of their stalls. 🔊
← The winter was as cold as the last one had been, and food was even shorter. 🔊
← He even claimed to have been there on one of his higher flights, and to have seen the everlasting fields of clover and the linseed cake and lump sugar growing on the hedges. 🔊
← YEARS passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by. A time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of the pigs. 🔊
← Their struggles and their difficulties were one. Was not the labour problem the same everywhere? 🔊