'Yes,' said Lucy, conscious of the strangest mingling of admiration and dislike, as she met the girl's wonderful eyes. 'Did he and Davy fall out?' 'They didn't get on about Sundays,' said Lucy, unwillingly, glad of the sheltering veil which enabled her to hold her own against this masterful creature. 'Is your father strict about chapel and that sort of thing?' Lucy nodded. She felt an ungracious wish to say as little as possible. David's sister laughed. 'Davy was that way once--just for a bit--afore he ran away, _I_ knew he wouldn't keep it on.' Then, with a queer look over her shoulder at her uncle, she relapsed into silence. Her attention was drawn to Dora's frame, and she moved up to it, bending over it and lifting the handkerchief that Dora had thrown across it. 'You mustn't touch it!' said Lucy, hastily, provoked, she knew not why, by every movement the girl made. 'It's very particular work.' 'I'm used to fine things,' said the other, scornfully. 'I'm a silk-weaver--that's my trade--all the best brocades, drawing-room trains, that style of thing. If you didn't handle _them_ carefully, you'd know it. Yes, she's doing it well,' and the speaker put her head down and examined the work critically. 'But it must go fearful slow, compared to a loom.' 'She does it splendidly,' said Lucy, annoyed; 'she's getting quite famous for it. That's going to a great church up in London, and she's got more orders than she can take.' 'Does she get good pay?' asked the girl eagerly. 'I don't know,' replied Lucy shortly. 'Because, if there's good pay,' said the other, examining the work again closely, 'I'd soon learn it--why I'd learn it in a week, you see! If I stay here I shan't get no more silk-weaving. And of course I'll stay. I'm just sick of the country. I'd have come up long ago if I'd known where to find Davy.' 'I'm ready,' said Dora in a constrained voice beside her. Louie Grieve looked up at her. 'Oh, you needn't look so glum!--I haven't hurt it. I'm used to good things, stuffs at two guineas a yard, and the like of that. What money do you take a week?' and she pointed to the frame. Something in the tone and manner made the question specially offensive. Dora pretended not to hear it. 'Shall we go now?' she said, hurriedly covering her precious work up from those sacrilegious fingers and putting it away. 'Lucy, you ought to be going home.' 'Well, I will directly,' said Lucy. 'Don't you bother about me.' They all went downstairs. Lucy put up her veil, and pressed her face against the window, watching for them. As she saw them cross Market Street, she was seized with hungry longing. She wanted to be going with them, to talk to him herself--to let him see what she had gone through for him. It would be months and months, perhaps, before they met again. And Dora would see him--his horrid sister--everyone but she. He would forget all about her, and she would be dull and wretched at Hastings.