, "Why, there isn't many lone men 'ud ha' been wishing to
take up with a little un like that: but I reckon the weaving makes you
handier than men as do out-door work--you're partly as handy as a
woman, for weaving comes next to spinning." Elderly masters and
mistresses, seated observantly in large kitchen arm-chairs, shook their
heads over the difficulties attendant on rearing children, felt Eppie's
round arms and legs, and pronounced them remarkably firm, and told
Silas that, if she turned out well (which, however, there was no
telling), it would be a fine thing for him to have a steady lass to do
for him when he got helpless. Servant maidens were fond of carrying
her out to look at the hens and chickens, or to see if any cherries
could be shaken down in the orchard; and the small boys and girls
approached her slowly, with cautious movement and steady gaze, like
little dogs face to face with one of their own kind, till attraction
had reached the point at which the soft lips were put out for a kiss.
No child was afraid of approaching Silas when Eppie was near him: there
was no repulsion around him now, either for young or old; for the
little child had come to link him once more with the whole world.
There was love between him and the child that blent them into one, and
there was love between the child and the world--from men and women with
parental looks and tones, to the red lady-birds and the round pebbles.

Silas began now to think of Raveloe life entirely in relation to Eppie:
she must have everything that was a good in Raveloe; and he listened
docilely, that he might come to understand better what this life was,
from which, for fifteen years, he had stood aloof as from a strange
thing, with which he could have no communion: as some man who has a
precious plant to which he would give a nurturing home in a new soil,
thinks of the rain, and the sunshine, and all influences, in relation
to his nursling, and asks industriously for all knowledge that will
help him to satisfy the wants of the searching roots, or to guard leaf
and bud from invading harm. The disposition to hoard had been utterly
crushed at the very first by the loss of his long-stored gold: the
coins he earned afterwards seemed as irrelevant as stones brought to
complete a house suddenly buried by an earthquake; the sense of
bereavement was too heavy upon him for the old thrill of satisfaction
to arise again at the touch of the newly-earned coin. And no