 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 be the better
for 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 often, and we should all be
on the look-out to do everything we could towards making you comfortable.«
    A plain man like Godfrey Cass, speaking under some embarrassment,
necessarily blunders on words that are coarser than his intentions, and that are
likely to fall gratingly on susceptible feelings. While he had been speaking,
Eppie had quietly passed her arm behind Silas's head, and let her hand rest
against it caressingly: she felt him trembling violently. He was silent for some
moments when Mr. Cass had ended - powerless under the conflict of emotions, all
alike painful. Eppie's heart was swelling at the sense that her father was in
distress; and she was just going to lean down and speak to him, when one
struggling dread at last gained the mastery over every other in Silas
