midday
Then Sylvia was compelled to put on her things , and fetch back her darling ; and excepting for this errand she seldom went out at all on week-days . About a fortnight after Kester 's farewell call , this need for her visit to Jeremiah Foster 's arose ; and it seemed to Sylvia that there could not be a better opportunity of fulfilling her promise and going to see the widow Dobson , whose cottage was on the other side of the river , low down on the cliff-side , just at the bend and rush of the full stream into the open sea . She set off pretty early in order to go there first . She found the widow with her house-place tidied up after the midday meal , and busy knitting at the open door -- not looking at her rapid-clicking needles , but gazing at the rush and recession of the waves before her ; yet not seeing them either , -- rather seeing days long past . She started into active civility as soon as she recognized Sylvia , who was to her as a great lady , never having known Sylvia Robson in her wild childish days . Widow Dobson was always a little scandalized at her brother Christopher 's familiarity with Mrs. Hepburn . She dusted a chair which needed no dusting , and placed it for Sylvia , sitting down herself on a three-legged stool to mark her sense of the difference in their conditions , for there was another chair or two in the humble dwelling ; and then the two fell into talk -- first about Kester , whom his sister would persist in calling Christopher , as if his dignity as her elder brother was compromised by any familiar abbreviation ; and by-and-by she opened her heart a little more .