was ended there was a great bustle and shifting of places,
while Mrs. Corney and her daughters carried out trays full of used
cups, and great platters of uneaten bread and butter into the
back-kitchen, to be washed up after the guests were gone. Just
because she was so conscious that she did not want to move, and
break up the little conversation between herself and Kinraid, Sylvia
forced herself to be as active in the service going on as became a
friend of the house; and she was too much her mother's own daughter
to feel comfortable at leaving all the things in the disorder which
to the Corney girls was second nature.

'This milk mun go back to t' dairy, I reckon,' said she, loading
herself with milk and cream.

'Niver fash thysel' about it,' said Nelly Corney, 'Christmas comes
but onest a year, if it does go sour; and mother said she'd have a
game at forfeits first thing after tea to loosen folks's tongues,
and mix up t' lads and lasses, so come along.'

But Sylvia steered her careful way to the cold chill of the dairy,
and would not be satisfied till she had carried away all the unused
provision into some fresher air than that heated by the fires and
ovens used for the long day's cooking of pies and cakes and much
roast meat.

When they came back a round of red-faced 'lads,' as young men up to
five-and-thirty are called in Lancashire and Yorkshire if they are
not married before, and lasses, whose age was not to be defined,
were playing at some country game, in which the women were
apparently more interested than the men, who looked shamefaced, and
afraid of each other's ridicule. Mrs. Corney, however, knew how to
remedy this, and at a sign from her a great jug of beer was brought
in. This jug was the pride of her heart, and was in the shape of a
fat man in white knee-breeches, and a three-cornered hat; with one
arm he supported the pipe in his broad, smiling mouth, and the other
was placed akimbo and formed the handle. There was also a great
china punch-bowl filled with grog made after an old ship-receipt
current in these parts, but not too strong, because if their
visitors had too much to drink at that early part of the evening 'it
would spoil t' fun,' as Nelly Corney had observed. Her father,
however, after the notions of hospitality prevalent at that time in
higher circles, had stipulated that each man should have 'enough'
before he left the house; enough meaning in Monkshaven parlance the
liberty of getting