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It was thus that he seemed to regard his daughter's presence in the mill-house. Under this treatment Carry was becoming restive and impatient.
He had been of late unsuccessful in his undertakings, whatever they were, and even Dusty Dick, as he observed his master's countenance, thought it prudent, as much as possible, to keep out of his way. Several strangers had come with him on board the lugger, and had taken possession of one of the rooms in the mill-house, while he occupied the other.
The sight roused the lad a little from his stupor. He thrust it in his shirt, and stroked Patrasche and drew him onward. The dog looked up wistfully in his face. Nello made straight for the mill-house, and went to the house door and struck on its panels. The miller's wife opened it weeping, with little Alois clinging close to her skirts.
Green turf sloped down to either edge, brown snaky tree-roots gleamed below the surface of the quiet water, while ahead of them the silvery shoulder and foamy tumble of a weir, arm-in-arm with a restless dripping mill-wheel, that held up in its turn a grey-gabled mill-house, filled the air with a soothing murmur of sound, dull and smothery, yet with little clear voices speaking up cheerfully out of it at intervals.
The orchard was silent, except for the murmur of the stream that bounds it. In the mill-house itself lights gleamed in the windows, and I saw a pleasant family-party gathered at their evening meal.
If this plan might be carried out, he would take her to the mill-house and seat her in the room in which the family lived, and then bring the old man in from his work. It might be that Jacob Brattle, in his wrath, would turn with violence upon the man who had dared thus to interfere in the affairs of his family; but he would certainly offer no rough usage to the poor girl.
The mill was of wood, the planks warped and weather-stained, the tiled root covered with mosses; the mill-house itself was a quaint brick building, with a pretty garden, full of old-fashioned flowers, sloping down to the pool; a big flight of pigeons circled round and round in the breeze, turning with a sudden clatter of wings; behind the house were small sandstone bluffs, fringed with feathery ashes, and the wood ran up steeply above into the sky.
Without him, what should I have been?" And these dreams, beautiful, impossible, innocent, free of all selfishness, full of heroical worship, were so closely about him as he went that he was happy happy even on this sad anniversary of Alois's saint's day, when he and Patrasche went home by themselves to the little dark hut and the meal of black bread, whilst in the mill-house all the children of the village sang and laughed, and ate the big round cakes of Dijon and the almond gingerbread of Brabant, and danced in the great barn to the light of the stars and the music of flute and fiddle.
'Let us sit down a bit on the bank here, Miss Oswald, he said to his airy little companion, as they reached the old stone bridge that crosses the stream just below the mill-house; 'it's such a lovely day one feels loath to miss any of it, and the scenery here looks so bright and cheerful after the endless brown heather and russet bracken about Dunbude.
The miller, who was a greedy man in his way, and never forewent an opportunity of honest profit, turned the mill-house into a little wayside inn, and, several pieces of good fortune falling in opportunely, built stables and got the position of post-master on the road.
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