t thankful to share in them, if possible, by getting
his nose scratched; and Eppie did not fail to gratify him with her
usual notice, though it was attended with the inconvenience of his
following them, painfully, up to the very door of their home.

But the sound of a sharp bark inside, as Eppie put the key in the door,
modified the donkey's views, and he limped away again without bidding.
The sharp bark was the sign of an excited welcome that was awaiting
them from a knowing brown terrier, who, after dancing at their legs in
a hysterical manner, rushed with a worrying noise at a tortoise-shell
kitten under the loom, and then rushed back with a sharp bark again, as
much as to say, "I have done my duty by this feeble creature, you
perceive"; while the lady-mother of the kitten sat sunning her white
bosom in the window, and looked round with a sleepy air of expecting
caresses, though she was not going to take any trouble for them.

The presence of this happy animal life was not the only change which
had come over the interior of the stone cottage. There was no bed now
in the living-room, and the small space was well filled with decent
furniture, all bright and clean enough to satisfy Dolly Winthrop's eye.
The oaken table and three-cornered oaken chair were hardly what was
likely to be seen in so poor a cottage: they had come, with the beds
and other things, from the Red House; for Mr. Godfrey Cass, as every
one said in the village, did very kindly by the weaver; and it was
nothing but right a man should be looked on and helped by those who
could afford it, when he had brought up an orphan child, and been
father and mother to her--and had lost his money too, so as he had
nothing but what he worked for week by week, and when the weaving was
going down too--for there was less and less flax spun--and Master
Marner was none so young. Nobody was jealous of the weaver, for he was
regarded as an exceptional person, whose claims on neighbourly help
were not to be matched in Raveloe. Any superstition that remained
concerning him had taken an entirely new colour; and Mr. Macey, now a
very feeble old man of fourscore and six, never seen except in his
chimney-corner or sitting in the sunshine at his door-sill, was of
opinion that when a man had done what Silas had done by an orphan
child, it was a sign that his money would come to light again, or
leastwise that the robber would be made to answer for it--for, as Mr.
Macey observed