Thank you, ma'am' (to the respectable-looking old servant), 'I'm well enough now; and perhaps, sir, I might speak a word with yo', for it's that I've come for.' 'It's a pity, Sylvia Hepburn, as thee didst not come to me at the bank, for it's been a long toil for thee all this way in the heat, with thy child.

But if there's aught I can do or say for thee, thou hast but to name it, I am sure.

Martha! wilt thou relieve her of her child while she comes with me into the parlour ?' But the wilful little Bella stoutly refused to go to any one, and Sylvia was not willing to part with her, tired though she was.
So the baby was carried into the parlour, and much of her after-life depended on this trivial fact.
Once installed in the easy-chair, and face to face with Jeremiah, Sylvia did not know how to begin.
Jeremiah saw this, and kindly gave her time to recover herself, by pulling out his great gold watch, and letting the seal dangle before the child's eyes, almost within reach of the child's eager little fingers.
'She favours you a deal,' said he, at last.

'More than her father,' he went on, purposely introducing Philip's name, so as to break the ice; for he rightly conjectured she had come to speak to him about something connected with her husband.
Still Sylvia said nothing; she was choking down tears and shyness, and unwillingness to take as confidant a man of whom she knew so little, on such slight ground (as she now felt it to be) as the little kindly speech with which she had been dismissed from that house the last time that she entered it.
'It's no use keeping yo', sir,' she broke out at last.

'It's about Philip as I comed to speak.