the
household fire, or when she went out in the gloaming to call the
cattle home to be milked, and sauntered back behind the patient,
slow-gaited creatures; and at times on future summer days, when, as
in the past, she took her knitting out for the sake of the freshness
of the faint sea-breeze, and dropping down from ledge to ledge of
the rocks that faced the blue ocean, established herself in a
perilous nook that had been her haunt ever since her parents had
come to Haytersbank Farm. From thence she had often seen the distant
ships pass to and fro, with a certain sort of lazy pleasure in
watching their swift tranquillity of motion, but no thought as to
where they were bound to, or what strange places they would
penetrate to before they turned again, homeward bound.

CHAPTER X

A REFRACTORY PUPIL

Sylvia was still full of the specksioneer and his stories, when
Hepburn came up to give her the next lesson. But the prospect of a
little sensible commendation for writing a whole page full of
flourishing 'Abednegos,' had lost all the slight charm it had ever
possessed. She was much more inclined to try and elicit some
sympathy in her interest in the perils and adventures of the
northern seas, than to bend and control her mind to the right
formation of letters. Unwisely enough, she endeavoured to repeat one
of the narratives that she had heard from Kinraid; and when she
found that Hepburn (if, indeed, he did not look upon the whole as a
silly invention) considered it only as an interruption to the real
business in hand, to which he would try to listen as patiently as he
could, in the hope of Sylvia's applying herself diligently to her
copy-book when she had cleared her mind, she contracted her pretty
lips, as if to check them from making any further appeals for
sympathy, and set about her writing-lesson in a very rebellious
frame of mind, only restrained by her mother's presence from spoken
mutiny.

'After all,' said she, throwing down her pen, and opening and
shutting her weary, cramped hand, 'I see no good in tiring myself
wi' learning for t' write letters when I'se never got one in a' my
life. What for should I write answers, when there's niver a one
writes to me? and if I had one, I couldn't read it; it's bad enough
wi' a book o' print as I've niver seen afore, for there's sure to be
new-fangled words in 't. I'm sure I wish the man were farred who
plagues his brains wi' striking out new words. Why can't folk