'
A plain man like Godfrey Cass, speaking under some embarrassment,
necessarily blunders on words that are coarser than his intentions,
and that are likely to fall gratingly on susceptible feelings. While
he had been speaking, Eppie had quietly passed her arm behind
Silas's head, and let her hand rest against it caressingly: she felt
him trembling violently. He was silent for some moments when Mr Cass
had ended- powerless under the conflict of emotions, all alike
painful. Eppie's heart was swelling at the sense that her father was
in distress; and she was just going to lean down and speak to him,
when one struggling dread at last gained the mastery over every
other in Silas, and he said, faintly:
'Eppie, my child, speak. I won't stand in your way. Thank Mr and
Mrs Cass.'
Eppie took her hand from her father's head, and came forward a
step. Her cheeks were flushed, but not with shyness this time: the
sense that her father was in doubt and suffering banished that sort of
self-consciousness. She dropped a low curtsy, first to Mrs Cass and
then to Mr Cass, and said:
'Thank you, ma'am- thank you, sir. But I can't leave my father, nor
own anybody nearer than him. And I don't want to be a lady- thank
you all the same' (here Eppie dropped another curtsy). 'I couldn't
give up the folks I've been used to.'
Eppie's lips began to tremble a little at the last words.
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