The 'mammy' was not a cry of need or uneasiness: Baby had been used to
utter it without expecting either sound or touch to follow.
'Anybody 'ud think the angils in heaven couldn't be prettier,' said
Dolly, rubbing the golden curls and kissing them. 'And to think of its
being covered wi' them dirty rags- and the poor mother- froze to
death; but there's Them as took care of it, and brought it to your
door, Master Marner. The door was open, and it walked in over the
snow, like as if it had been a little starved robin. Didn't you say
the door was open?'
'Yes,' said Silas, meditatively. 'Yes- the door was open. The
money's gone I don't know where, and this is come from I don't know
where.'
He had not mentioned to anyone his unconsciousness of the child's
entrance, shrinking from questions which might lead to the fact he
himself suspected- namely, that he had been in one of his trances.
'Ah,' said Dolly, with soothing gravity, 'it's like the night and
the morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the
harvest- one goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how nor
where. We may strive and scrat and fend, but it's little we can do
arter all- the big things come and go wi' no striving o' our'n- they
do, that they do; and I think you're in the right on it to keep the
little un' Master Marner, seeing as it's been sent to you, though
there's folks as thinks different.
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