Mrs Poyser has strong and generally accurate opinions about the people around her, and she nails Hetty’s character in a few lines.  I love pebbles, but not hearts that have their hardness.

“It’s my belief her heart’s as hard as a pibble (sic).”

See another simile for hardness in human nature.

Source: George Eliot, Adam Bede (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985 (1859)), p. 201

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