Sylvia herself had been rather put out by Philip’s way of coming to her.  ‘It made her look so silly,’ she thought; and ’what for must he make a sight of himself, coming among the market folk in that-a-way’; and when he took to admiring her hat, she pulled out the flowers in a pet, and threw them down, and trampled them under foot.

‘What for art thou doing that, Sylvie?’ said her mother.  ’The flowers is well enough, though may-be thy hat might ha’ been stained.’

‘I don’t like Philip to speak to me so,’ said Sylvia, pouting.

‘How?’ asked her mother.

But Sylvia could not repeat his words.  She hung her head, and looked red and pre-occupied, anything but pleased.  Philip had addressed his first expression of personal admiration at an unfortunate time.

It just shows what different views different men and women take of their fellow-creatures, when I say that Hester looked upon Philip as the best and most agreeable man she had ever known.  He was not one to speak of himself without being questioned on the subject, so his Haytersbank relations, only come into the neighborhood in the last year or two, knew nothing of the trials he had surmounted, or the difficult duties he had performed.  His aunt, indeed, had strong faith in him, both from partial knowledge of his character, and because he was of her own tribe and kin; but she had never learnt the small details of his past life.  Sylvia respected him as her mother’s friend, and treated him tolerably well as long as he preserved his usual self-restraint of demeanour, but hardly ever thought of him when he was absent.

Now Hester, who had watched him daily for all the years since he had first come as an errand-boy into Foster’s shop—­watching with quiet, modest, yet observant eyes—­had seen how devoted he was to his master’s interests, had known of his careful and punctual ministration to his absent mother’s comforts, as long as she was living to benefit by his silent, frugal self-denial.

His methodical appropriation of the few hours he could call his own was not without its charms to the equally methodical Hester; the way in which he reproduced any lately acquired piece of knowledge—­knowledge so wearisome to Sylvia—­was delightfully instructive to Hester—­although, as she was habitually silent, it would have required an observer more interested in discovering her feelings than Philip was to have perceived the little flush on the pale cheek, and the brightness in the half-veiled eyes whenever he was talking.  She had not thought of love on either side.  Love was a vanity, a worldliness not to be spoken about, or even thought about.  Once or twice before the Robsons came into the neighbourhood, an idea had crossed her mind that possibly the quiet, habitual way in which she and Philip lived together, might drift them into matrimony at some distant period; and she could not bear the humble advances which Coulson, Philip’s fellow-lodger, sometimes made.  They seemed to disgust her with him.