Sylvia’s cheeks were rather flushed by the warmth of the room after the frosty air.  The blue ribbon with which she had thought it necessary to tie back her hair before putting on her hat to go to market had got rather loose, and allowed her disarranged curls to stray in a manner which would have annoyed her extremely, if she had been upstairs to look at herself in the glass; but although they were not set in the exact fashion which Sylvia esteemed as correct, they looked very pretty and luxuriant.  Her little foot, placed on the ‘traddle’, was still encased in its smartly buckled shoe—­not slightly to her discomfort, as she was unaccustomed to be shod in walking far; only as Philip had accompanied them home, neither she nor Molly had liked to go barefoot.  Her round mottled arm and ruddy taper hand drew out the flax with nimble, agile motion, keeping time to the movement of the wheel.  All this Philip could see; the greater part of her face was lost to him as she half averted it, with a shy dislike to the way in which she knew from past experience that cousin Philip always stared at her.  And avert it as she would she heard with silent petulance the harsh screech of Philip’s chair as he heavily dragged it on the stone floor, sitting on it all the while, and felt that he was moving round so as to look at her as much as was in his power, without absolutely turning his back on either her father or mother.  She got herself ready for the first opportunity of contradiction or opposition.

‘Well, wench! and has ta bought this grand new cloak?’

‘Yes, feyther.  It’s a scarlet one.’

‘Ay, ay! and what does mother say?’

‘Oh, mother’s content,’ said Sylvia, a little doubting in her heart, but determined to defy Philip at all hazards.

’Mother ’ll put up with it if it does na spot would be nearer fact, I’m thinking,’ said Bell, quietly.

‘I wanted Sylvia to take the gray,’ said Philip.

’And I chose the red; it’s so much gayer, and folk can see me the farther off.  Feyther likes to see me at first turn o’ t’ lane, don’t yo’, feyther? and I’ll niver turn out when it’s boun’ for to rain, so it shall niver get a spot near it, mammy.’

‘I reckoned it were to wear i’ bad weather,’ said Bell.  ’Leastways that were the pretext for coaxing feyther out o’ it.’

She said it in a kindly tone, though the words became a prudent rather than a fond mother.  But Sylvia understood her better than Daniel did as it appeared.

‘Hou’d thy tongue, mother.  She niver spoke a pretext at all.’

He did not rightly know what a ‘pretext’ was:  Bell was a touch better educated than her husband, but he did not acknowledge this, and made a particular point of differing from her whenever she used a word beyond his comprehension.

’She’s a good lass at times; and if she liked to wear a yellow-orange cloak she should have it.  Here’s Philip here, as stands up for laws and press-gangs, I’ll set him to find us a law again pleasing our lass; and she our only one.  Thou dostn’t think on that, mother!