She was so much in earnest that Molly was perplexed.  She did not quite like saying that she had alluded to no one in particular, only to a possible sweetheart, so she began to think what young man had made the most civil speeches to her in her life; the list was not a long one to go over, for her father was not so well off as to make her sought after for her money, and her face was rather of the homeliest.  But she suddenly remembered her cousin, the specksioneer, who had given her two large shells, and taken a kiss from her half-willing lips before he went to sea the last time.  So she smiled a little, and then said,—­

‘Well!  I dunno.  It’s ill talking o’ these things afore one has made up one’s mind.  And perhaps if Charley Kinraid behaves hissen, I might be brought to listen.’

‘Charley Kinraid! who’s he?’

‘Yon specksioneer cousin o’ mine, as I was talking on.’

‘And do yo’ think he cares for yo’?’ asked Sylvia, in a low, tender tone, as if touching on a great mystery.

Molly only said, ‘Be quiet wi’ yo’,’ and Sylvia could not make out whether she cut the conversation so short because she was offended, or because they had come to the shop where they had to sell their butter and eggs.

’Now, Sylvia, if thou’ll leave me thy basket, I’ll make as good a bargain as iver I can on ’em; and thou can be off to choose this grand new cloak as is to be, afore it gets any darker.  Where is ta going to?’

‘Mother said I’d better go to Foster’s,’ answered Sylvia, with a shade of annoyance in her face.  ‘Feyther said just anywhere.’

‘Foster’s is t’ best place; thou canst try anywhere afterwards.  I’ll be at Foster’s in five minutes, for I reckon we mun hasten a bit now.  It’ll be near five o’clock.’

Sylvia hung her head and looked very demure as she walked off by herself to Foster’s shop in the market-place.

CHAPTER III

BUYING A NEW CLOAK

Foster’s shop was the shop of Monkshaven.  It was kept by two Quaker brothers, who were now old men; and their father had kept it before them; probably his father before that.  People remembered it as an old-fashioned dwelling-house, with a sort of supplementary shop with unglazed windows projecting from the lower story.  These openings had long been filled with panes of glass that at the present day would be accounted very small, but which seventy years ago were much admired for their size.  I can best make you understand the appearance of the place by bidding you think of the long openings in a butcher’s shop, and then to fill them up in your imagination with panes about eight inches by six, in a heavy wooden frame.  There was one of these windows on each side the door-place, which was kept partially closed through the day by a low gate about a yard high.  Half the shop was appropriated to grocery; the other half to drapery, and a little mercery.  The good old brothers gave