Cass himself
took it on Christmas-day; while those who were held to be »good livers« went to
church with greater, though still with moderate, frequency.
    Mrs. Winthrop was one of these: she was in all respects a woman of
scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life seemed to offer them too
scantily unless she rose at half-past four, though this threw a scarcity of work
over the more advanced hours of the morning, which it was a constant problem
with her to remove. Yet she had not the vixenish temper which is sometimes
supposed to be a necessary condition of such habits: she was a very mild,
patient woman, whose nature it was to seek out all the sadder and more serious
elements of life, and pasture her mind upon them. She was the person always
first thought of in Raveloe when there was illness or death in a family, when
leeches were to be applied, or there was a sudden disappointment in a monthly
nurse. She was a »comfortable woman« - good-looking, fresh-complexioned, having
her lips always slightly screwed, as if she felt herself in a sick-room with the
doctor or the clergyman present. But she was never whimpering; no one had seen
her shed tears; she was simply grave and inclined to shake her head and sigh,
almost imperceptibly, like a funereal mourner who is not a relation. It seemed
surprising that Ben Winthrop, who loved his quart-pot and his joke, got along so
well with Dolly; but she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as
everything else, considering that »men would be so,« and viewing the stronger
sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally
troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.
    This good wholesome woman could hardly fail to have her mind drawn strongly
towards Silas Marner, now that he appeared in the light of a sufferer; and one
Sunday afternoon she took her little boy Aaron with her, and went to call on
Silas, carrying in her hand some small lard-cakes, flat paste-like articles much
esteemed in Raveloe. Aaron, an apple-cheeked youngster of seven, with a clean
starched frill which looked like a plate for the apples, needed all his
adventurous curiosity to embolden him against the possibility that the big-eyed
weaver might do him some bodily injury; and his dubiety was much increased when,
on arriving at the Stone-pits, they heard the mysterious sound of the loom.
    »Ah, it is as I thought,« said