‘Mother’s but ailing,’ said Sylvia, a little conscience-smitten at having so entirely forgotten everything in the delight of the present, ‘and I said I wouldn’t be late.’

‘And do you allays keep to your word?’ asked he, with a tender meaning in his tone.

‘Allays; leastways I think so,’ replied she, blushing.

’Then if I ask you not to forget me, and you give me your word, I may be sure you’ll keep it.’

‘It wasn’t I as forgot you,’ said Sylvia, so softly as not to be heard by him.

He tried to make her repeat what she had said, but she would not, and he could only conjecture that it was something more tell-tale than she liked to say again, and that alone was very charming to him.

‘I shall walk home with you,’ said he, as Sylvia at last rose to depart, warned by a further glimpse of Philip’s angry face.

‘No!’ said she, hastily, ‘I can’t do with yo’’; for somehow she felt the need of pacifying Philip, and knew in her heart that a third person joining their tete-a-tete walk would only increase his displeasure.

‘Why not?’ said Charley, sharply.

‘Oh!  I don’t know, only please don’t!’

By this time her cloak and hood were on, and she was slowly making her way down her side of the room followed by Charley, and often interrupted by indignant remonstrances against her departure, and the early breaking-up of the party.  Philip stood, hat in hand, in the doorway between the kitchen and parlour, watching her so intently that he forgot to be civil, and drew many a jest and gibe upon him for his absorption in his pretty cousin.

When Sylvia reached him, he said,—­

‘Yo’re ready at last, are yo’?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, in her little beseeching tone.  ’Yo’ve not been wanting to go long, han yo’?  I ha’ but just eaten my supper.’

’Yo’ve been so full of talk, that’s been the reason your supper lasted so long.  That fellow’s none going wi’ us?’ said he sharply, as he saw Kinraid rummaging for his cap in a heap of men’s clothes, thrown into the back-kitchen.

‘No,’ said Sylvia, in affright at Philip’s fierce look and passionate tone.  ‘I telled him not.’

But at that moment the heavy outer door was opened by Daniel Robson himself—­bright, broad, and rosy, a jolly impersonation of Winter.  His large drover’s coat was covered with snow-flakes, and through the black frame of the doorway might be seen a white waste world of sweeping fell and field, with the dark air filled with the pure down-fall.  Robson stamped his snow-laden feet and shook himself well, still standing on the mat, and letting a cold frosty current of fresh air into the great warm kitchen.  He laughed at them all before he spoke.