ive on it as
long as it would last: it wouldn't go far if you'd nobody to keep but
yourself, and you've had two to keep for a good many years now."

"Eh, sir," said Silas, unaffected by anything Godfrey was saying, "I'm
in no fear o' want. We shall do very well--Eppie and me 'ull do well
enough. There's few working-folks have got so much laid by as that. I
don't know what it is to gentlefolks, but I look upon it as a
deal--almost too much. And as for us, it's little we want."

"Only the garden, father," said Eppie, blushing up to the ears the
moment after.

"You love a garden, do you, my dear?" said Nancy, thinking that this
turn in the point of view might help her husband. "We should agree in
that: I give a deal of time to the garden."

"Ah, there's plenty of gardening at the Red House," said Godfrey,
surprised at the difficulty he found in approaching a proposition which
had seemed so easy to him in the distance. "You've done a good part by
Eppie, Marner, for sixteen years. It 'ud be a great comfort to you to
see her well provided for, wouldn't it? She looks blooming and
healthy, but not fit for any hardships: she doesn't look like a
strapping girl come of working parents. You'd like to see her taken
care of by those who can leave her well off, and make a lady of her;
she's more fit for it than for a rough life, such as she might come to
have in a few years' time."

A slight flush came over Marner's face, and disappeared, like a passing
gleam. Eppie was simply wondering Mr. Cass should talk so about things
that seemed to have nothing to do with reality; but Silas was hurt and
uneasy.

"I don't take your meaning, sir," he answered, not having words at
command to express the mingled feelings with which he had heard Mr.
Cass's words.

"Well, my meaning is this, Marner," said Godfrey, determined to come to
the point. "Mrs. Cass and I, you know, have no children--nobody to
benefit by our good home and everything else we have--more than enough
for ourselves. And we should like to have somebody in the place of a
daughter to us--we should like to have Eppie, and treat her in every
way as our own child. It 'ud be a great comfort to you in your old
age, I hope, to see her fortune made in that way, after you've been at
the trouble of bringing her up so well. And it's right you should have
every reward for that. And Eppie, I'm sure, will always love you and
be grateful to you: she'd come and see you very