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