‘Yo’d better come to-morrow e’en, and see what a hand she’ll mak’ on her,’ said Kester.

‘To-morrow night I shall be far on my road back to Shields.’

‘To-morrow!’ said Sylvia, suddenly looking up at him, and then dropping her eyes, as she found he had been watching for the effect of his intelligence on her.

‘I mun be back at t’ whaler, where I’m engaged,’ continued he.  ’She’s fitting up after a fresh fashion, and as I’ve been one as wanted new ways, I mun be on the spot for t’ look after her.  Maybe I shall take a run down here afore sailing in March.  I’m sure I shall try.’

There was a good deal meant and understood by these last few words.  The tone in which they were spoken gave them a tender intensity not lost upon either of the hearers.  Kester cocked his eye once more, but with as little obtrusiveness as he could, and pondered the sailor’s looks and ways.  He remembered his coming about the place the winter before, and how the old master had then appeared to have taken to him; but at that time Sylvia had seemed to Kester too little removed from a child to have either art or part in Kinraid’s visits; now, however, the case was different.  Kester in his sphere—­among his circle of acquaintance, narrow though it was—­had heard with much pride of Sylvia’s bearing away the bell at church and at market, wherever girls of her age were congregated.  He was a north countryman, so he gave out no further sign of his feelings than his mistress and Sylvia’s mother had done on a like occasion.

‘T’ lass is weel enough,’ said he; but he grinned to himself, and looked about, and listened to the hearsay of every lad, wondering who was handsome, and brave, and good enough to be Sylvia’s mate.  Now, of late, it had seemed to the canny farm-servant pretty clear that Philip Hepburn was ‘after her’; and to Philip, Kester had an instinctive objection, a kind of natural antipathy such as has existed in all ages between the dwellers in a town and those in the country, between agriculture and trade.  So, while Kinraid and Sylvia kept up their half-tender, half-jesting conversation, Kester was making up his slow persistent mind as to the desirability of the young man then present as a husband for his darling, as much from his being other than Philip in every respect, as from the individual good qualities he possessed.  Kester’s first opportunity of favouring Kinraid’s suit consisted in being as long as possible over his milking; so never were cows that required such ‘stripping,’ or were expected to yield such ‘afterings’, as Black Nell and Daisy that night.  But all things must come to an end; and at length Kester got up from his three-legged stool, on seeing what the others did not—­that the dip-candle in the lantern was coming to an end—­and that in two or three minutes more the shippen would be in darkness, and so his pails of milk be endangered.  In an instant Sylvia had started out of her delicious dreamland, her drooping eyes were raised, and recovered their power of observation; her ruddy arms were freed from the apron in which she had enfolded them, as a protection from the gathering cold, and she had seized and adjusted the wooden yoke across her shoulders, ready to bear the brimming milk-pails to the dairy.