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!

Bell did think of that often; oftener than her husband, perhaps, for she remembered every day, and many times a day, the little one that had been born and had died while its father was away on some long voyage.  But it was not her way to make replies.

Sylvia, who had more insight into her mother’s heart than Daniel, broke in with a new subject.

‘Oh! as for Philip, he’s been preaching up laws all t’ way home.  I said naught, but let Molly hold her own; or else I could ha’ told a tale about silks an’ lace an’ things.’