Eppie (Hephzibah)

The golden-haired child found by Silas Maraner on his hearth in the place of his lost gold, who brings a new interest in life to the old man. "A blond dimpled girl of eighteen, who has vainly tried to chastise her curly auburn hair into smoothness under her brown bonnet: the hair ripples as obstinately as a brooklet under the March breeze, and the little ringlets burst away from the restraining comb behind and show themselves below the bonnet-crown. Eppie cannot help being rather vexed about her hair, for there is no other girl in Raveloe who has hair at all like it, and she thinks hair ought to be smooth. She does not like to be blameworthy even in small things: you see how neatly her prayer-book is folded in her spotted handkerchief..." "The tender and peculiar love with which Silas had reared her in almost inseparable companionship with himself, aided by the seclusion of their dwelling, had preserved her from the lowering influences of the village talk and habits, and had kept her mind in that freshness which is sometimes falsely supposed to be an invariable attribute of rusticity. Perfect lvoe has a breath of poetry whcih can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings; and this breath of poetry had surrounded Eppie from the time when she had followed the bright gleam that beckoned her to Silas's hearth; so that it is not surprising if, in other things besides her delicate prettiness, she was not quite a common village maiden, but had a touch of refinement and fervour which came from no other teaching than that of tenderly-nurtured unvitiated feeling." When her mother, Molly Farren, Godfrey Cass's deserted wife, is trudging to Raveloe with her child, to denounce Godfrey, she sinks exhausted in the snow, and the child slips from the dead woman's arms and crawls to Silas Marner's hearth, whree he finds her later, in place of his lost gold. Ignorant of her parentage, she is adopted and reared by the unhappy old weaver who, through her needs and companionship, is restored to happiness and a normal relation to his fellows. She grows into a good and charming young woman, and when her real father, Godfrey Cass, wishes to acknowledge her and take her home, she loyally refuses to leave the old man who had beena father to her. When she and Aaron Winthrop are married, the old weaver lives with them.

<em>Silas Marner</em>

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