So Kester took his leave, his mind set at ease by Sylvia’s promise to go and see his sister pretty often during his absence in the North.

But Sylvia’s habits were changed since she, as a girl at Haytersbank, liked to spend half her time in the open air, running out perpetually without anything on to scatter crumbs to the poultry, or to take a piece of bread to the old cart-horse, to go up to the garden for a handful of herbs, or to clamber to the highest point around to blow the horn which summoned her father and Kester home to dinner.  Living in a town where it was necessary to put on hat and cloak before going out into the street, and then to walk in a steady and decorous fashion, she had only cared to escape down to the freedom of the sea-shore until Philip went away; and after that time she had learnt so to fear observation as a deserted wife, that nothing but Bella’s health would have been a sufficient motive to take her out of doors.  And, as she had told Kester, the necessity of giving the little girl a daily walk was very much lightened by the great love and affection which Jeremiah Foster now bore to the child.  Ever since the day when the baby had come to his knee, allured by the temptation of his watch, he had apparently considered her as in some sort belonging to him; and now he had almost come to think that he had a right to claim her as his companion in his walk back from the Bank to his early dinner, where a high chair was always placed ready for the chance of her coming to share his meal.  On these occasions he generally brought her back to the shop-door when he returned to his afternoon’s work at the Bank.  Sometimes, however, he would leave word that she was to be sent for from his house in the New Town, as his business at the Bank for that day was ended.  Then Sylvia was compelled to put on her things, and fetch back her darling; and excepting for this errand she seldom went out at all on week-days.

About a fortnight after Kester’s farewell call, this need for her visit to Jeremiah Foster’s arose; and it seemed to Sylvia that there could not be a better opportunity of fulfilling her promise and going to see the widow Dobson, whose cottage was on the other side of the river, low down on the cliff-side, just at the bend and rush of the full stream into the open sea.  She set off pretty early in order to go there first.  She found the widow with her house-place tidied up after the midday meal, and busy knitting at the open door—­not looking at her rapid-clicking needles, but gazing at the rush and recession of the waves before her; yet not seeing them either,—­rather seeing days long past.

She started into active civility as soon as she recognized Sylvia, who was to her as a great lady, never having known Sylvia Robson in her wild childish days.  Widow Dobson was always a little scandalized at her brother Christopher’s familiarity with Mrs. Hepburn.

She dusted a chair which needed no dusting, and placed it for Sylvia, sitting down herself on a three-legged stool to mark her sense of the difference in their conditions, for there was another chair or two in the humble dwelling; and then the two fell into talk—­first about Kester, whom his sister would persist in calling Christopher, as if his dignity as her elder brother was compromised by any familiar abbreviation; and by-and-by she opened her heart a little more.