Besides (he told his conscience) he was pledged to his aunt to watch
over Sylvia like a brother. So in the interval before New Year's
Eve, he silently revelled as much as any young girl in the
anticipation of the happy coming time.

At this hour, all the actors in this story having played out their
parts and gone to their rest, there is something touching in
recording the futile efforts made by Philip to win from Sylvia the
love he yearned for. But, at the time, any one who had watched him
might have been amused to see the grave, awkward, plain young man
studying patterns and colours for a new waistcoat, with his head a
little on one side, after the meditative manner common to those who
are choosing a new article of dress. They might have smiled could
they have read in his imagination the frequent rehearsals of the
coming evening, when he and she should each be dressed in their gala
attire, to spend a few hours under a bright, festive aspect, among
people whose company would oblige them to assume a new demeanour
towards each other, not so familiar as their every-day manner, but
allowing more scope for the expression of rustic gallantry. Philip
had so seldom been to anything of the kind, that, even had Sylvia
not been going, he would have felt a kind of shy excitement at the
prospect of anything so unusual. But, indeed, if Sylvia had not been
going, it is very probable that Philip's rigid conscience might have
been aroused to the question whether such parties did not savour too
much of the world for him to form one in them.

As it was, however, the facts to him were simply these. He was going
and she was going. The day before, he had hurried off to Haytersbank
Farm with a small paper parcel in his pocket--a ribbon with a little
briar-rose pattern running upon it for Sylvia. It was the first
thing he had ever ventured to give her--the first thing of the kind
would, perhaps, be more accurate; for when he had first begun to
teach her any lessons, he had given her Mavor's Spelling-book, but
that he might have done, out of zeal for knowledge, to any dunce of
a little girl of his acquaintance. This ribbon was quite a different
kind of present; he touched it tenderly, as if he were caressing it,
when he thought of her wearing it; the briar-rose (sweetness and
thorns) seemed to be the very flower for her; the soft, green ground
on which the pink and brown pattern ran, was just the colour to show
off her complexion. And she w