morning. He turned round again, and was going to place her in
her little chair near the loom, when she peeped out at him with black
face and hands again, and said, "Eppie in de toal-hole!"

This total failure of the coal-hole discipline shook Silas's belief in
the efficacy of punishment. "She'd take it all for fun," he observed
to Dolly, "if I didn't hurt her, and that I can't do, Mrs. Winthrop.
If she makes me a bit o' trouble, I can bear it. And she's got no
tricks but what she'll grow out of."

"Well, that's partly true, Master Marner," said Dolly, sympathetically;
"and if you can't bring your mind to frighten her off touching things,
you must do what you can to keep 'em out of her way. That's what I do
wi' the pups as the lads are allays a-rearing. They _will_ worry and
gnaw--worry and gnaw they will, if it was one's Sunday cap as hung
anywhere so as they could drag it. They know no difference, God help
'em: it's the pushing o' the teeth as sets 'em on, that's what it is."

So Eppie was reared without punishment, the burden of her misdeeds
being borne vicariously by father Silas. The stone hut was made a soft
nest for her, lined with downy patience: and also in the world that lay
beyond the stone hut she knew nothing of frowns and denials.

Notwithstanding the difficulty of carrying her and his yarn or linen at
the same time, Silas took her with him in most of his journeys to the
farmhouses, unwilling to leave her behind at Dolly Winthrop's, who was
always ready to take care of her; and little curly-headed Eppie, the
weaver's child, became an object of interest at several outlying
homesteads, as well as in the village. Hitherto he had been treated
very much as if he had been a useful gnome or brownie--a queer and
unaccountable creature, who must necessarily be looked at with
wondering curiosity and repulsion, and with whom one would be glad to
make all greetings and bargains as brief as possible, but who must be
dealt with in a propitiatory way, and occasionally have a present of
pork or garden stuff to carry home with him, seeing that without him
there was no getting the yarn woven. But now Silas met with open
smiling faces and cheerful questioning, as a person whose satisfactions
and difficulties could be understood. Everywhere he must sit a little
and talk about the child, and words of interest were always ready for
him: "Ah, Master Marner, you'll be lucky if she takes the measles soon
and easy!"--or