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 husband, but he did not acknowledge this, and made a particular point of differing from her whenever she used a word beyond his comprehension.
'She's a good lass at times; and if she liked to wear a yellow-orange cloak she should have it.

Here's Philip here, as stands up for laws and press-gangs, I'll set him to find us a law again pleasing our lass; and she our only one.

Thou dostn't think on that, mother! Bell did think of that often; oftener than her husband, perhaps, for she remembered every day, and many times a day, the little one that had been born and had died while its father was away on some long voyage.

But it was not her way to make replies.
Sylvia, who had more insight into her mother's heart than Daniel, broke in with a new subject.
'Oh! as for Philip, he's been preaching up laws all t' way home.