The gold had kept his thoughts in an
ever-repeated circle, leading to nothing beyond itself; but Eppie
was an object compacted of changes and hopes that forced his
thoughts onward, and carried them far away from their old eager pacing
towards the same blank limit- carried them away to the new things that
would come with the coming years, when Eppie would have learned to
understand how her father Silas cared for her; and made him look for
images of that time in the ties and charities that bound together
the families of the neighbours. The gold had asked that he should
sit weaving longer and longer, deafened and blinded more and more to
all things except the monotony of his loom and the repetition of his
web; but Eppie called him away from his weaving, and made him think
all its pauses a holiday, reawakening his senses with her fresh
life, even to the old winter-flies that came crawling forth in the
early spring sunshine, and warming him into joy because she had joy.
And when the sunshine grew strong and lasting, so that the
buttercups were thick in the meadows, Silas might be seen in the sunny
midday, or in the late afternoon when the shadows were lengthening
under the hedgerows, strolling out with uncovered head to carry
Eppie beyond the Stone-pits to where the flowers grew, till they
reached some favourite bank where he could sit down, while Eppie
toddled to pluck the flowers, and make remarks to the winged things
that murmured happily above the bright petals, calling 'Dad-dad's'
attention continually by bringing him the flowers.
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