'As the day lengthens so the cold strengthens.' It was so that year;
the hard frost which began on new year's eve lasted on and on into
late February, black and bitter, but welcome enough to the farmers,
as it kept back the too early growth of autumn-sown wheat, and gave
them the opportunity of leading manure. But it did not suit invalids
as well, and Bell Robson, though not getting worse, did not
make any progress towards amendment. Sylvia was kept very busy,
notwithstanding that she had the assistance of a poor widow-woman in
the neighbourhood on cleaning, or washing, or churning days. Her
life was quiet and monotonous, although hard-working; and while her
hands mechanically found and did their accustomed labour, the
thoughts that rose in her head always centred on Charley Kinraid,
his ways, his words, his looks, whether they all meant what she
would fain believe they did, and whether, meaning love at the time,
such a feeling was likely to endure. Her mother's story of crazy
Nancy had taken hold of her; but not as a 'caution,' rather as a
parallel case to her own. Like Nancy, and borrowing the poor girl's
own words, she would say softly to herself, 'He once was here'; but
all along she believed in her heart he would come back again to her,
though it touched her strangely to imagine the agonies of forsaken
love.
Philip knew little of all this. He was very busy with facts and
figures, doggedly fighting through the necessary business, and only
now and then allowing himself the delicious relaxation of going to
Haytersbank in an evening, to inquire after his aunt's health, and
to see Sylvia; for the two Fosters were punctiliously anxious to
make their shopmen test all their statements; insisting on an
examination of the stock, as if Hepburn and Coulson were strangers
to the shop; having the Monkshaven auctioneer in to appraise the
fixtures and necessary furniture; going over the shop books for the
last twenty years with their successors, an employment which took up
evening after evening; and not unfrequently taking one of the young
men on the long commercial journeys which were tediously made in a
gig. By degrees both Hepburn and Coulson were introduced to distant
manufacturers and wholesale dealers. They would have been willing to
take the Fosters' word for every statement the brothers had made on
new year's day; but this, it was evident, would not have satisfied
their masters, who were scrupulous in insisting that whatever
advantage there was should always fall on the side of the younger
men.
When Philip saw Sylvia she was always quiet and gentle; perhaps more
silent than she had been a year ago, and she did not attend so
briskly to what was passing around her. She was rather thinner and
paler; but whatever change there was in her was always an
improvement in Philip's eyes, so long as she spoke graciously to
him. He thought she was suffering from long-continued anxiety about
her mother, or that she had too much to do; and either cause was
enough to make him treat her with a grave regard and deference which
had a repressed tenderness in it, of which she, otherwise occupied,
was quite unaware. She liked him better, too, than she had done a
year or two before, because he did not show her any of the eager
attention which teased her then, although its meaning was not fully
understood.