‘Yo’r father, he’ll be well and hearty, I hope?’ asked Charley.

‘Yes,’ replied Sylvia, and then she wished she could originate some remark; he would think her so stupid if she just kept on saying such little short bits of speeches, and if he thought her stupid he might perhaps go away again to his former place.

But he was quite far enough gone in love of her beauty, and pretty modest ways, not to care much whether she talked or no, so long as she showed herself so pleasingly conscious of his close neighbourhood.

‘I must come and see the old gentleman; and your mother, too,’ he added more slowly, for he remembered that his visits last year had not been quite so much welcomed by Bell Robson as by her husband; perhaps it was because of the amount of drink which he and Daniel managed to get through of an evening.  He resolved this year to be more careful to please the mother of Sylvia.

When tea was ended there was a great bustle and shifting of places, while Mrs. Corney and her daughters carried out trays full of used cups, and great platters of uneaten bread and butter into the back-kitchen, to be washed up after the guests were gone.  Just because she was so conscious that she did not want to move, and break up the little conversation between herself and Kinraid, Sylvia forced herself to be as active in the service going on as became a friend of the house; and she was too much her mother’s own daughter to feel comfortable at leaving all the things in the disorder which to the Corney girls was second nature.

‘This milk mun go back to t’ dairy, I reckon,’ said she, loading herself with milk and cream.

‘Niver fash thysel’ about it,’ said Nelly Corney, ’Christmas comes but onest a year, if it does go sour; and mother said she’d have a game at forfeits first thing after tea to loosen folks’s tongues, and mix up t’ lads and lasses, so come along.’

But Sylvia steered her careful way to the cold chill of the dairy, and would not be satisfied till she had carried away all the unused provision into some fresher air than that heated by the fires and ovens used for the long day’s cooking of pies and cakes and much roast meat.

When they came back a round of red-faced ‘lads,’ as young men up to five-and-thirty are called in Lancashire and Yorkshire if they are not married before, and lasses, whose age was not to be defined, were playing at some country game, in which the women were apparently more interested than the men, who looked shamefaced, and afraid of each other’s ridicule.  Mrs. Corney, however, knew how to remedy this, and at a sign from her a great jug of beer was brought in.  This jug was the pride of her heart, and was in the shape of a fat man in white knee-breeches, and a three-cornered hat; with one arm he supported the pipe in his broad, smiling mouth, and the other was placed akimbo and formed the handle.  There was also a great china punch-bowl filled with grog made after an old ship-receipt