'
The weaving must stand still a long while this morning, for now
Eppie must be washed and have clean clothes on; but it was to be hoped
that this punishment would have a lasting effect, and save time in
future- though, perhaps, it would have been better if Eppie had
cried more.
In half an hour she was clean again, and Silas having turned his
back to see what he could do with the linen band, threw it down again,
with the reflection that Eppie would be good without fastening for the
rest of the morning. He turned round again, and was going to place her
in her little chair near the loom, when she peeped out at him with
black face and hands again, and said, 'Eppie in de toal-hole!'
This total failure of the coal-hole discipline shook Silas's belief
in the efficacy of punishment. 'She'd take it all for fun,' he
observed to Dolly, 'if I didn't hurt her, and that I can't do, Mrs
Winthrop. If she makes me a bit o' trouble, I can bear it. And she's
got no tricks but what she'll grow out of.'
'Well, that's partly true, Master Marner,' said Dolly,
sympathetically; 'and if you can't bring your mind to frighten her off
touching things, you must do what you can to keep 'em out of her
way. That's what I do wi' the pups as the lads are allays a-rearing.
They will worry and gnaw- worry and gnaw they will, if it was one's
Sunday cap as hung anywhere so as they could drag it.
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