s this constant reference to her dead husband.
In one sense it was a blessing; all the circumstances attendant on
his sad and untimely end were swept out of her mind along with the
recollection of the fact itself. She referred to him as absent, and
had always some plausible way of accounting for it, which satisfied
her own mind; and, accordingly they fell into the habit of humouring
her, and speaking of him as gone to Monkshaven, or afield, or
wearied out, and taking a nap upstairs, as her fancy led her to
believe for the moment. But this forgetfulness, though happy for
herself, was terrible for her child. It was a constant renewing of
Sylvia's grief, while her mother could give her no sympathy, no
help, or strength in any circumstances that arose out of this grief.
She was driven more and more upon Philip; his advice and his
affection became daily more necessary to her.

Kester saw what would be the end of all this more clearly than
Sylvia did herself; and, impotent to hinder what he feared and
disliked, he grew more and more surly every day. Yet he tried to
labour hard and well for the interests of the family, as if they
were bound up in his good management of the cattle and land. He was
out and about by the earliest dawn, working all day long with might
and main. He bought himself a pair of new spectacles, which might,
he fancied, enable him to read the _Farmer's Complete Guide_, his
dead master's _vade-mecum_. But he had never learnt more than his
capital letters, and had forgotten many of them; so the spectacles
did him but little good. Then he would take the book to Sylvia, and
ask her to read to him the instructions he needed; instructions, be
it noted, that he would formerly have despised as mere
book-learning: but his present sense of responsibility had made him
humble.

Sylvia would find the place with all deliberation: and putting her
finger under the line to keep the exact place of the word she was
reading, she would strive in good earnest to read out the directions
given; but when every fourth word had to be spelt, it was rather
hopeless work, especially as all these words were unintelligible to
the open-mouthed listener, however intent he might be. He had
generally to fall back on his own experience; and, guided by that,
things were not doing badly in his estimation, when, one day, Sylvia
said to him, as they were in the hay-field, heaping up the hay into
cocks with Dolly Reid's assistance--

'Kester-