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--