for I
mayn't be equil to stand i' the desk at all, come another winter."
Here Mr. Macey paused, perhaps expecting some sign of emotion in his
hearer; but not observing any, he went on. "And as for the money for
the suit o' clothes, why, you get a matter of a pound a-week at your
weaving, Master Marner, and you're a young man, eh, for all you look so
mushed. Why, you couldn't ha' been five-and-twenty when you come into
these parts, eh?"

Silas started a little at the change to a questioning tone, and
answered mildly, "I don't know; I can't rightly say--it's a long while
since."

After receiving such an answer as this, it is not surprising that Mr.
Macey observed, later on in the evening at the Rainbow, that Marner's
head was "all of a muddle", and that it was to be doubted if he ever
knew when Sunday came round, which showed him a worse heathen than many
a dog.

Another of Silas's comforters, besides Mr. Macey, came to him with a
mind highly charged on the same topic. This was Mrs. Winthrop, the
wheelwright's wife. The inhabitants of Raveloe were not severely
regular in their church-going, and perhaps there was hardly a person in
the parish who would not have held that to go to church every Sunday in
the calendar would have shown a greedy desire to stand well with
Heaven, and get an undue advantage over their neighbours--a wish to be
better than the "common run", that would have implied a reflection on
those who had had godfathers and godmothers as well as themselves, and
had an equal right to the burying-service. At the same time, it was
understood to be requisite for all who were not household servants, or
young men, to take the sacrament at one of the great festivals: Squire
Cass himself took it on Christmas-day; while those who were held to be
"good livers" went to church with greater, though still with moderate,
frequency.

Mrs. Winthrop was one of these: she was in all respects a woman of
scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life seemed to offer
them too scantily unless she rose at half-past four, though this threw
a scarcity of work over the more advanced hours of the morning, which
it was a constant problem with her to remove. Yet she had not the
vixenish temper which is sometimes supposed to be a necessary condition
of such habits: she was a very mild, patient woman, whose nature it was
to seek out all the sadder and more serious elements of life, and
pasture her mind upon them. She was t