Sylvia darted off in obedience to the call; glad to leave him, as at the moment Kinraid resentfully imagined.

Through the open door he heard the conversation between mother and daughter, almost unconscious of its meaning, so difficult did he find it to wrench his thoughts from the ideas he had just been forming with Sylvia's bright lovely face right under his eyes.
'Sylvia!' said her mother, 'who's yonder ?' Bell was sitting up in the attitude of one startled out of slumber into intensity of listening; her hands on each of the chair-arms, as if just going to rise.

'There's a fremd man i' t' house.

I heerd his voice!' 'It's only--it's just Charley Kinraid; he was a-talking to me i' t' dairy.' 'I' t' dairy, lass! and how com'd he i' t' dairy ?' 'He com'd to see feyther.

Feyther asked him last night,' said Sylvia, conscious that he could overhear every word that was said, and a little suspecting that he was no great favourite with her mother.
'Thy feyther's out; how com'd he i' t' dairy ?' persevered Bell.
'He com'd past this window, and saw yo' asleep, and didn't like for t' waken yo'; so he com'd on to t' shippen, and when I carried t' milk in---' But now Kinraid came in, feeling the awkwardness of his situation a little, yet with an expression so pleasant and manly in his open face, and in his exculpatory manner, that Sylvia lost his first words in a strange kind of pride of possession in him, about which she did not reason nor care to define the grounds.