ary to tie back her hair before putting on her hat to go to
market had got rather loose, and allowed her disarranged curls to
stray in a manner which would have annoyed her extremely, if she had
been upstairs to look at herself in the glass; but although they
were not set in the exact fashion which Sylvia esteemed as correct,
they looked very pretty and luxuriant. Her little foot, placed on
the 'traddle', was still encased in its smartly buckled shoe--not
slightly to her discomfort, as she was unaccustomed to be shod in
walking far; only as Philip had accompanied them home, neither she
nor Molly had liked to go barefoot. Her round mottled arm and ruddy
taper hand drew out the flax with nimble, agile motion, keeping time
to the movement of the wheel. All this Philip could see; the greater
part of her face was lost to him as she half averted it, with a shy
dislike to the way in which she knew from past experience that
cousin Philip always stared at her. And avert it as she would she
heard with silent petulance the harsh screech of Philip's chair as
he heavily dragged it on the stone floor, sitting on it all the
while, and felt that he was moving round so as to look at her as
much as was in his power, without absolutely turning his back on
either her father or mother. She got herself ready for the first
opportunity of contradiction or opposition.

'Well, wench! and has ta bought this grand new cloak?'

'Yes, feyther. It's a scarlet one.'

'Ay, ay! and what does mother say?'

'Oh, mother's content,' said Sylvia, a little doubting in her heart,
but determined to defy Philip at all hazards.

'Mother 'll put up with it if it does na spot would be nearer fact,
I'm thinking,' said Bell, quietly.

'I wanted Sylvia to take the gray,' said Philip.

'And I chose the red; it's so much gayer, and folk can see me the
farther off. Feyther likes to see me at first turn o' t' lane, don't
yo', feyther? and I'll niver turn out when it's boun' for to rain,
so it shall niver get a spot near it, mammy.'

'I reckoned it were to wear i' bad weather,' said Bell. 'Leastways
that were the pretext for coaxing feyther out o' it.'

She said it in a kindly tone, though the words became a prudent
rather than a fond mother. But Sylvia understood her better than
Daniel did as it appeared.

'Hou'd thy tongue, mother. She niver spoke a pretext at all.'

He did not rightly know what a 'pretext' was: Bell was a touch
better educated than her hus