’Well, to be sure! how thin and pale yo’ve grown, Sylvia!  Matrimony hasn’t agreed wi’ yo’ as well as it’s done wi me.  Brunton is allays saying (yo’ know what a man he is for his joke) that if he’d ha’ known how many yards o’ silk I should ha’ ta’en for a gown, he’d ha’ thought twice afore he’d ha’ married me.  Why, I’ve gained a matter o’ thirty pound o’ flesh sin’ I were married!’

‘Yo’ do look brave and hearty!’ said Sylvia, putting her sense of her companion’s capacious size and high colour into the prettiest words she could.

‘Eh!  Sylvia! but I know what it is,’ said Molly, shaking her head.  ‘It’s just because o’ that husband o’ thine as has gone and left thee; thou’s pining after him, and he’s not worth it.  Brunton said, when he heared on it—­I mind he was smoking at t’ time, and he took his pipe out of his mouth, and shook out t’ ashes as grave as any judge—­“The man,” says he, “as can desert a wife like Sylvia Robson as was, deserves hanging!” That’s what he says!  Eh!  Sylvia, but speakin’ o’ hanging I was so grieved for yo’ when I heared of yo’r poor feyther!  Such an end for a decent man to come to!  Many a one come an’ called on me o’ purpose to hear all I could tell ’em about him!’

‘Please don’t speak on it!’ said Sylvia, trembling all over.

’Well, poor creature, I wunnot.  It is hard on thee, I grant.  But to give t’ devil his due, it were good i’ Hepburn to marry thee, and so soon after there was a’ that talk about thy feyther.  Many a man would ha’ drawn back, choose howiver far they’d gone.  I’m noane so sure about Charley Kinraid.  Eh, Sylvia! only think on his being alive after all.  I doubt if our Bessy would ha’ wed Frank Dawson if she’d known as he wasn’t drowned.  But it’s as well she did, for Dawson’s a man o’ property, and has getten twelve cows in his cow-house, beside three right down good horses; and Kinraid were allays a fellow wi’ two strings to his bow.  I’ve allays said and do maintain, that he went on pretty strong wi’ yo’, Sylvie; and I will say I think he cared more for yo’ than for our Bessy, though it were only yesterday at e’en she were standing out that he liked her better than yo’.  Yo’ll ha’ heared on his grand marriage?’

‘No!’ said Sylvia, with eager painful curiosity.

‘No!  It was in all t’ papers!  I wonder as yo’ didn’t see it.  Wait a minute!  I cut it out o’ t’ Gentleman’s Magazine, as Brunton bought o’ purpose, and put it i’ my pocket-book when I were a-coming here:  I know I’ve got it somewheere.’

She took out her smart crimson pocket-book, and rummaged in the pocket until she produced a little crumpled bit of printed paper, from which she read aloud,

’On January the third, at St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, Charles Kinraid, Esq., lieutenant Royal Navy, to Miss Clarinda Jackson, with a fortune of 10,000_l_.’

‘Theere!’ said she, triumphantly, ’it’s something as Brunton says, to be cousin to that.’