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No tenderer or more careful nurse could the little Jan have had. And he throve apace. The windmiller took more notice of him than he had been wont to do of his own children in their babyhood. He had never been a playful or indulgent father, but he now watched with considerable interest the child who, all unconsciously, was bringing in so much "grist to the mill."
She was calmed at last, however, and the windmiller took her once more into his arms, and Mrs. Lake carrying Jan, they all climbed up the narrow ladder to the next floor. Heavily ground the huge stones with a hundred and twenty revolutions a minute, making the chamber shake as they went round. They made the nurse giddy. The simplest machinery has a bewildering effect upon an unaccustomed person.
He was not altogether ill-pleased by it, for the woman's unwonted peevishness broke down in new tears over the child, whom she bore away to bed, pouring forth over it half inarticulate indignation against its unnatural parents. "She've a soft heart, have the missus," said the windmiller, thoughtfully, as he went to the outer door. "I'm in doubts if she won't take to it more than her own yet.
But, with a restlessness which was perhaps part of her disease, she wandered from story to story of the windmill, guided by Jan, and the windmiller made no objection. The country folk who brought grist to the mill would strain their ears with a sense of awe to catch Mrs.
"Well, what now?" said the stranger, sharply, as the horse was pulled back on his haunches. "Is it named?" gasped the miller. "Oh, yes, all that sort of thing," was the impatient reply. "And what name?" asked the miller. "Jan. J, A, N," said the stranger, shouting against the blustering wind. "And and the other name?" said the windmiller, who was now standing close to the stranger's ear.
I be mortal stoopid, sir, but I'd work my fingers to the bwoan for the likes of you, Master Lake!" George stayed on, and though the very next time the windmiller was absent his "voolish" assistant did not get so much as a toll-dish of corn ground to flour, he was so full of penitence and promises that he weathered that tempest and many a succeeding one.
The windmiller went back to his work. He had risked something over this business in leaving the mill in the hands of others, even for so short a time. Then the storm abated somewhat. The wind went round, and blew with less violence a fine steady breeze. The miller began to think of going into the dwelling-room for a bit of supper to carry him through his night's work.
The windmiller grew to watch for him, and to lean on him in the helplessness of his despair. And he listened humbly to the old man's fervid religious counsels. His own little threads of philosophy were all blowing loose and useless in this storm of trouble. The evening that Master Swift came up to arrange about the burial of the second child, he found the other two just dead.
For the first time there came upon the windmiller a sense of the fact that it is an uncertain and a rather dangerous game to drive a desperate woman into a corner. His missus was as soft-hearted a soul as ever lived, and for her to sit unmoved by the weeping of a neglected child was a proof that something was very far wrong indeed.
Lake had picked up several of her husband's bits of proverbial wisdom, which she often flattered him by retailing to his face. "Too hot to hold, mostly," was her reply, in knowing tones. "Ay, ay, missus, so a be," said the windmiller. And after a while he added, "Gearge is slow, sartinly, mortal slow; but Gearge is sure."
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