Sylvia's Lovers

One hot day, early in October of the year 1796, two girls set off

from their country homes to Monkshaven to sell their butter and

eggs, for they were both farmers' daughters, though rather in

different circumstances; for Molly Corney was one of a large family

of children, and had to rough it accordingly; Sylvia Robson was an

only child, and was much made of in more people's estimation than

Mary's by her elderly parents. They had each purchases to make after

their sales were effected, as sales of butter and eggs were effected

in those days by the market-women sitting on the steps of the great

old mutilated cross till a certain hour in the afternoon, after

which, if all their goods were not disposed of, they took them

unwillingly to the shops and sold them at a lower price. But good

housewives did not despise coming themselves to the Butter Cross,

and, smelling and depreciating the articles they wanted, kept up a

perpetual struggle of words, trying, often in vain, to beat down

prices. A housekeeper of the last century would have thought that

she did not know her business, if she had not gone through this

preliminary process; and the farmers' wives and daughters treated it

all as a matter of course, replying with a good deal of independent

humour to the customer, who, once having discovered where good

butter and fresh eggs were to be sold, came time after time to

depreciate the articles she always ended in taking. There was

leisure for all this kind of work in those days.

Molly had tied a knot on her pink-spotted handkerchief for each of

the various purchases she had to make; dull but important articles

needed for the week's consumption at home; if she forgot any one of

them she knew she was sure of a good 'rating' from her mother. The

number of them made her pocket-handkerchief look like one of the

nine-tails of a 'cat;' but not a single thing was for herself, nor,

indeed, for any one individual of her numerous family. There was

neither much thought nor much money to spend for any but collective

wants in the Corney family.

It was different with Sylvia. She was going to choose her first

cloak, not to have an old one of her mother's, that had gone down

through two sisters, dyed for the fourth time (and Molly would have

been glad had even this chance been hers), but to buy a bran-new

duffle cloak all for herself, with not even an elder authority to

curb her as to price, only Molly to give her admiring counsel, and

as much sympathy as was consistent with a little patient envy of

Sylvia's happier circumstances. Every now and then they wandered off

from the one grand subject of thought, but Sylvia, with unconscious

art, soon brought the conversation round to the fresh consideration

of the respective merits of gray and scarlet. These girls were

walking bare-foot and carrying their shoes and stockings in their

hands during the first part of their way; but as they were drawing

near Monkshaven they stopped, and turned aside along a foot-path

that led from the main-road down to the banks of the Dee. There were

great stones in the river about here, round which the waters

gathered and eddied and formed deep pools. Molly sate down on the

grassy bank to wash her feet; but Sylvia, more active (or perhaps

lighter-hearted with the notion of the cloak in the distance),

placed her basket on a gravelly bit of shore, and, giving a long

spring, seated herself on a stone almost in the middle of the

stream. Then she began dipping her little rosy toes in the cool

rushing water and whisking them out with childish glee.