window, and instead, was a smart knitted blind. Children played
before the house-door; a dog lying on the step flew at Philip; all
was so strange, that it was even the strangest thing of all for
Kester to appear where everything else was so altered!

Philip had to put up with a good deal of crabbed behaviour on the
part of the latter before he could induce Kester to promise to come
down into the town and see Sylvia in her new home.

Somehow, the visit when paid was but a failure; at least, it seemed
so at the time, though probably it broke the ice of restraint which
was forming over the familiar intercourse between Kester and Sylvia.
The old servant was daunted by seeing Sylvia in a strange place, and
stood, sleeking his hair down, and furtively looking about him,
instead of seating himself on the chair Sylvia had so eagerly
brought forward for him.

Then his sense of the estrangement caused by their new positions
infected her, and she began to cry pitifully, saying,--

'Oh, Kester! Kester! tell me about Haytersbank! Is it just as it
used to be in feyther's days?'

'Well, a cannot say as it is,' said Kester, thankful to have a
subject started. 'They'n pleughed up t' oud pasture-field, and are
settin' it for 'taters. They're not for much cattle, isn't
Higginses. They'll be for corn in t' next year, a reckon, and
they'll just ha' their pains for their payment. But they're allays
so pig-headed, is folk fra' a distance.'