To return to the party we left standing on the high-raised footway that ran alongside of the bridle-road to Haytersbank.  Sylvia had leisure in her heart to think ’how good Hester is for sitting with the poor bed-ridden sister of Darley!’ without having a pang of self-depreciation in the comparison of her own conduct with that she was capable of so fully appreciating.  She had gone to church for the ends of vanity, and remained to the funeral for curiosity and the pleasure of the excitement.  In this way a modern young lady would have condemned herself, and therefore lost the simple, purifying pleasure of admiration of another.

Hester passed onwards, going down the hill towards the town.  The other three walked slowly on.  All were silent for a few moments, then Sylvia said—­

‘How good she is!’

And Philip replied with ready warmth,—­

’Yes, she is; no one knows how good but us, who live in the same house wi’ her.’

‘Her mother is an old Quakeress, bean’t she?’ Molly inquired.

‘Alice Rose is a Friend, if that is what you mean,’ said Philip.

’Well, well! some folk’s so particular.  Is William Coulson a Quaker, by which a mean a Friend?’

’Yes; they’re all on ’em right-down good folk.’

‘Deary me!  What a wonder yo’ can speak to such sinners as Sylvia and me, after keepin’ company with so much goodness,’ said Molly, who had not yet forgiven Philip for doubting Kinraid’s power of killing men.  ‘Is na’ it, Sylvia?’

But Sylvia was too highly strung for banter.  If she had not been one of those who went to mock, but remained to pray, she had gone to church with the thought of the cloak-that-was-to-be uppermost in her mind, and she had come down the long church stair with life and death suddenly become real to her mind, the enduring sea and hills forming a contrasting background to the vanishing away of man.  She was full of a solemn wonder as to the abiding-place of the souls of the dead, and a childlike dread lest the number of the elect should be accomplished before she was included therein.  How people could ever be merry again after they had been at a funeral, she could not imagine; so she answered gravely, and slightly beside the question: 

‘I wonder if I was a Friend if I should be good?’

‘Gi’ me your red cloak, that’s all, when yo’ turn Quaker; they’ll none let thee wear scarlet, so it ‘ll be of no use t’ thee.’

‘I think thou’rt good enough as thou art,’ said Philip, tenderly—­at least as tenderly as he durst, for he knew by experience that it did not do to alarm her girlish coyness.  Either one speech or the other made Sylvia silent; neither was accordant to her mood of mind; so perhaps both contributed to her quietness.

‘Folk say William Coulson looks sweet on Hester Rose,’ said Molly, always up in Monkshaven gossip.  It was in the form of an assertion, but was said in the tone of a question, and as such Philip replied to it.