For many weeks after their wedding, Kester never came near them:  a chance word or two from Sylvia showed Philip that she had noticed this and regretted it; and, accordingly, he made it his business at the next leisure opportunity to go to Haytersbank (never saying a word to his wife of his purpose), and seek out Kester.

All the whole place was altered!  It was new white-washed, new thatched:  the patches of colour in the surrounding ground were changed with altered tillage; the great geraniums were gone from the window, and instead, was a smart knitted blind.  Children played before the house-door; a dog lying on the step flew at Philip; all was so strange, that it was even the strangest thing of all for Kester to appear where everything else was so altered!

Philip had to put up with a good deal of crabbed behaviour on the part of the latter before he could induce Kester to promise to come down into the town and see Sylvia in her new home.

Somehow, the visit when paid was but a failure; at least, it seemed so at the time, though probably it broke the ice of restraint which was forming over the familiar intercourse between Kester and Sylvia.  The old servant was daunted by seeing Sylvia in a strange place, and stood, sleeking his hair down, and furtively looking about him, instead of seating himself on the chair Sylvia had so eagerly brought forward for him.

Then his sense of the estrangement caused by their new positions infected her, and she began to cry pitifully, saying,—­

’Oh, Kester!  Kester! tell me about Haytersbank!  Is it just as it used to be in feyther’s days?’

‘Well, a cannot say as it is,’ said Kester, thankful to have a subject started.  ‘They’n pleughed up t’ oud pasture-field, and are settin’ it for ’taters.  They’re not for much cattle, isn’t Higginses.  They’ll be for corn in t’ next year, a reckon, and they’ll just ha’ their pains for their payment.  But they’re allays so pig-headed, is folk fra’ a distance.’

So they went on discoursing on Haytersbank and the old days, till Bell Robson, having finished her afternoon nap, came slowly down-stairs to join them; and after that the conversation became so broken up, from the desire of the other two to attend and reply as best they could to her fragmentary and disjointed talk, that Kester took his leave before long; falling, as he did so, into the formal and unnaturally respectful manner which he had adopted on first coming in.

But Sylvia ran after him, and brought him back from the door.

’To think of thy going away, Kester, without either bit or drink; nay, come back wi’ thee, and taste wine and cake.’

Kester stood at the door, half shy, half pleased, while Sylvia, in all the glow and hurry of a young housekeeper’s hospitality, sought for the decanter of wine, and a wine-glass in the corner cupboard, and hastily cut an immense wedge of cake, which she crammed into his hand in spite of his remonstrances; and then she poured him out an overflowing glass of wine, which Kester would far rather have gone without, as he knew manners too well to suppose that he might taste it without having gone through the preliminary ceremony of wishing the donor health and happiness.  He stood red and half smiling, with his cake in one hand, his wine in the other, and then began,—­