“Thank you … kindly,” said Silas, hesitating a little. “I’ll be glad if you’ll tell me things. But,” he added uneasily, leaning forward to look at Baby with some jealousy, as she was resting her head backward against Dolly’s arm and eyeing him contentedly from a distance—“but I want to do things for it myself, else it may get fond o’ somebody else, and not fond o’ me. I’ve been used to fending for myself in the house; I can learn, I can learn.”

“Eh, to be sure,” said Dolly gently. “I’ve seen men as are wonderful handy wi’ children. The men are awk’ard and contrairy mostly, God help ’em; but when the drink’s out of ’em they aren’t unsensible, though they’re bad for leeching and bandaging—so fiery and unpatient. You see this goes first, next the skin,” proceeded Dolly, taking up the little shirt and putting it on.

“Yes,” said Marner docilely, bringing his eyes very close, that they might be initiated in the mysteries; whereupon Baby seized his head with both her small arms and put her lips against his face with purring noises.

“See there,” said Dolly, with a woman’s tender tact, “she’s fondest o’ you. She wants to go o’ your lap, I’ll be bound. Go then, take her, Master Marner; you can put the things on, and then you can say as you’ve done for her from the first of her coming to you.”

Marner took her on his lap, trembling with an emotion mysterious to himself, at something unknown dawning on his life. Thought and feeling were so confused within him that if he had tried to give them utterance he could only have said that the child was come instead of the gold—that the gold had turned into the child. He took the garments from Dolly, and put them on under her teaching—interrupted, of course, by Baby’s gymnastics.

“There, then! why, you take to it quite easy, Master Marner,” said Dolly; “but what shall you do when you’re forced to sit in your loom? For she’ll get busier and mischievouser every day—she will, bless her. It’s lucky as you’ve got that high hearth i’stead of a grate, for that keeps the fire more out of her reach; but if you’ve got anything as can be split or broke, or as is fit to cut her fingers off, she’ll be at it, and it is but right you should know.”

Silas meditated a little while in some perplexity. “I’ll tie her to the leg o’ the loom,” he said at last—“tie her with a good long strip o’ something.”

“Well, mayhap that’ll do, as it’s a little gell, for they’re easier persuaded to sit i’ one place nor the lads. I know what the lads are, for I’ve had four—four I’ve had, God knows—and if you was to take and tie ’em up they’d make a fighting and a crying as if you was ringing the pigs. But I’ll bring you my little chair, and some bits o’ red rag and things for her to play wi’; an’ she’ll sit and chatter to ’em as if they was alive. Eh, if it wasn’t a sin to the lads to wish ’em made different, bless ’em, I should ha’ been glad for one of ’em to be a little gell; and to think as I could ha’ taught her to scour, and mend, and the knitting, and everything! But I can teach ’em this little un, Master Marner, when she gets old enough.”

“But she’ll be my little un,” said Marner, rather hastily; “she’ll be nobody else’s.”

“No, to be sure; you’ll have a right to her, if you’re a father to her, and bring her up according. But,” added Dolly, coming to a point which she had determined beforehand to touch upon, “you must bring her up like christened folks’s children, and take her to church, and let her learn her catechise, as my little Aaron can say off—the ‘I believe,’ and everything, and ‘hurt nobody by word or deed’—as well as if he was the clerk. That’s what you must do, Master Marner, if you’d do the right thing by the orphin child.”

Marner’s pale face flushed suddenly under a new anxiety. His mind was too busy trying to give some definite bearing to Dolly’s words for him to think of answering her.

“And it’s my belief,” she went on, “as the poor little creature has never been christened, and it’s nothing but right as the parson should be spoke to; and if you was noways unwilling, I’d talk to Mr. Macey about it this very day. For if the child ever went anyways wrong, and you hadn’t done your part by it, Master