Sylvia's Lovers

Each girl wore tightly-fitting stockings, knit by her own hands, of

the blue worsted common in that country; they had on neat

high-heeled black leather shoes, coming well over the instep, and

fastened as well as ornamented with bright steel buckles. They did

not walk so lightly and freely now as they did before they were

shod, but their steps were still springy with the buoyancy of early

youth; for neither of them was twenty, indeed I believe Sylvia was

not more than seventeen at this time.

They clambered up the steep grassy path, with brambles catching at

their kilted petticoats, through the copse-wood, till they regained

the high road; and then they 'settled themselves,' as they called

it; that is to say, they took off their black felt hats, and tied up

their clustering hair afresh; they shook off every speck of wayside

dust; straightened the little shawls (or large neck-kerchiefs, call

them which you will) that were spread over their shoulders, pinned

below the throat, and confined at the waist by their apron-strings;

and then putting on their hats again, and picking up their baskets,

they prepared to walk decorously into the town of Monkshaven.

The next turn of the road showed them the red peaked roofs of the

closely packed houses lying almost directly below the hill on which

they were. The full autumn sun brought out the ruddy colour of the

tiled gables, and deepened the shadows in the narrow streets. The

narrow harbour at the mouth of the river was crowded with small

vessels of all descriptions, making an intricate forest of masts.

Beyond lay the sea, like a flat pavement of sapphire, scarcely a

ripple varying its sunny surface, that stretched out leagues away

till it blended with the softened azure of the sky. On this blue

trackless water floated scores of white-sailed fishing boats,

apparently motionless, unless you measured their progress by some

land-mark; but still, and silent, and distant as they seemed, the

consciousness that there were men on board, each going forth into

the great deep, added unspeakably to the interest felt in watching

them. Close to the bar of the river Dee a larger vessel lay to.

Sylvia, who had only recently come into the neighbourhood, looked at

this with the same quiet interest as she did at all the others; but

Molly, as soon as her eye caught the build of it, cried out aloud-

'She's a whaler! she's a whaler home from t' Greenland seas! T'

first this season! God bless her!' and she turned round and shook

both Sylvia's hands in the fulness of her excitement. Sylvia's

colour rose, and her eyes sparkled out of sympathy.