yo', feyther? and I'll niver turn out when it's boun' for to rain,
so it shall niver get a spot near it, mammy.'

'I reckoned it were to wear i' bad weather,' said Bell. 'Leastways
that were the pretext for coaxing feyther out o' it.'

She said it in a kindly tone, though the words became a prudent
rather than a fond mother. But Sylvia understood her better than
Daniel did as it appeared.

'Hou'd thy tongue, mother. She niver spoke a pretext at all.'

He did not rightly know what a 'pretext' was: Bell was a touch
better educated than her husband, but he did not acknowledge this,
and made a particular point of differing from her whenever she used
a word beyond his comprehension.

'She's a good lass at times; and if she liked to wear a
yellow-orange cloak she should have it. Here's Philip here, as
stands up for laws and press-gangs, I'll set him to find us a law
again pleasing our lass; and she our only one. Thou dostn't think on
that, mother!

Bell did think of that often; oftener than her husband, perhaps, for
she remembered every day, and many times a day, the little one that
had been born and had died while its father was away on some long
voyage. But it was not her way to make replies.

Sylvia, who had more insight into her mother's heart than Daniel,
broke in with a new subject.