← No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. 🔊
← or "Whoa back, comrade!" as the case might be. And every animal down to the humblest worked at turning the hay and gathering it. 🔊
← Nobody shirked−or almost nobody. Mollie, it was true, was not good at getting up in the mornings, and had a way of leaving work early on the ground that there was a stone in her hoof. 🔊
← Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on−that is, badly. 🔊
← At last the day came when Snowball's plans were completed. At the Meeting on the following Sunday the question of whether or not to begin work on the windmill was to be put to the vote. 🔊
← ALL that year the animals worked like slaves. But they were happy in their work; they grudged no effort or sacrifice, well aware that everything that they did was for the benefit of themselves and those of their kind who would come after them, and not for a pack of idle, thieving human beings. 🔊
← All the animals remembered passing such resolutions: or at least they thought that they remembered it. 🔊
← They would meet in the public−houses and prove to one another by means of diagrams that the windmill was bound to fall down, or that if it did stand up, then that it would never work. 🔊
← Boxer would even come out at nights and work for an hour or two on his own by the light of the harvest moon. 🔊
← 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. 🔊
← Whenever anything went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball. If a window was broken or a drain was blocked up, someone was certain to say that Snowball had come in the night and done it, and when the key of the store−shed was lost, the whole farm was convinced that Snowball had thrown it down the well. 🔊
← But it was some minutes before they could fully take it in. They all remembered, or thought they remembered, how they had seen Snowball charging ahead of them at the Battle of the Cowshed, how he had rallied and encouraged them at every turn, and how he had not paused for an instant even when the pellets from Jones's gun had wounded his back. 🔊
← They were shaken and miserable. They did not know which was more shocking−the treachery of the animals who had leagued themselves with Snowball, or the cruel retribution they had just witnessed. 🔊
← There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. 🔊
← 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. 🔊
← Somehow or other, the last two words had slipped out of the animals' memory. But they saw now that the Commandment had not been violated; for clearly there was good reason for killing the traitors who had leagued themselves with Snowball. 🔊
← In nothing that he said or did was there any sign that his strength was not what it had been. 🔊
← Some did it better than others, one or two were even a trifle unsteady and looked as though they would have liked the support of a stick, but every one of them made his way right round the yard successfully. 🔊
← The animals were weeding the turnip field. They worked diligently hardly raising their faces from the ground, and not knowing whether to be more frightened of the pigs or of the human visitors. 🔊
← There had been a time−not that he, or any of the present company, had shared such sentiments−but there had been a time when the respected proprietors of Animal Farm had been regarded, he would not say with hostility, but perhaps with a certain measure of misgiving, by their human neighbours. 🔊