id shortly and gravely,--

'Sylvia's none so set upo' matrimony; she's content to bide wi' me
and her father. Let a be such talking, it's not i' my way.'

Molly was a little subdued; but still her elation at the prospect of
being so well married kept cropping out of all the other subjects
which were introduced; and when she went away, Mrs. Robson broke out
in an unwonted strain of depreciation.

'That's the way wi' some lasses. They're like a cock on a dunghill,
when they've teased a silly chap into wedding 'em. It's
cock-a-doodle-do, I've cotched a husband, cock-a-doodle-doo, wi'
'em. I've no patience wi' such like; I beg, Sylvie, thou'lt not get
too thick wi' Molly. She's not pretty behaved, making such an ado
about men-kind, as if they were two-headed calves to be run after.'

'But Molly's a good-hearted lass, mother. Only I never dreamt but
what she was troth-plighted wi' Charley Kinraid,' said Sylvia,
meditatively.

'That wench 'll be troth-plight to th' first man as 'll wed her and
keep her i' plenty; that's a' she thinks about,' replied Bell,
scornfully.

CHAPTER XI

VISIONS OF THE FUTURE

Before May was out, Molly Corney was married and had left the
neighbourhood for Newcastle. Although Charley Kinraid was not the
bridegroom, Sylvia's promise to be bridesmaid was claimed. But the
friendship brought on by the circumstances of neighbourhood and
parity of age had become very much weakened in the time that elapsed
between Molly's engagement and wedding. In the first place, she
herself was so absorbed in her preparations, so elated by her good
fortune in getting married, and married, too, before her elder
sister, that all her faults blossomed out full and strong. Sylvia
felt her to be selfish; Mrs. Robson thought her not maidenly. A year
before she would have been far more missed and regretted by Sylvia;
now it was almost a relief to the latter to be freed from the
perpetual calls upon her sympathy, from the constant demands upon
her congratulations, made by one who had no thought or feeling to
bestow on others; at least, not in these weeks of 'cock-a-doodle-dooing,'
as Mrs. Robson persisted in calling it. It was seldom that Bell
was taken with a humorous idea; but this once having hatched a
solitary joke, she was always clucking it into notice--to go on
with her own poultry simile.

Every time during that summer that Philip saw his cousin, he thought
her prettier than she had ever been before; s