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Updated: May 31, 2025
But at times she was troubled by an imperfect remembrance of Jan's history, and, with some echo of her old reluctance to adopt him, she would wail that she "didn't want a stranger child." It cut Jan to the heart. Ever since he had known that he was not a miller's son, he had protested against the knowledge. He loved the windmill and the windmiller's trade.
Little did he want toys, as he lay on his red shawl gazing upwards hour by hour, with Abel to point out every change in their vast field of view. It is a part of a windmiller's trade to study the heavens, and Abel may have inherited a taste for looking skywards. Then, on these great open downs there is so much sky to be seen, you can hardly help seeing it, and there is not much else to look at.
The murmur of voices, too, which the woman overheard, betokened a close conversation, in which the familiar drawl of the windmiller's dialect blended audibly with that kind of clean-clipt speaking peculiar to gentlefolk. "He've been talking to master's five minute an' more," muttered the miller's wife. "What can 'ee want with un?"
Perhaps it was sky-gazing, or the windmiller's trick of watching the clouds, or perhaps it was something else, from which Jan derived an erectness of carriage not common among the children about him, and a quaint way of carrying his little chin in the air as if he were listening to voices from a higher level than that of the round-house floor.
The mother had been weak herself at the time that the baby fell ill, and unusually ill-fitted to bear a heavy blow. Then her watchful eyes had seen symptoms of ailing in the child long before the windmiller's good sense would allow a fuss to be made, and expense to be incurred about a little peevishness up or down.
The windmiller's wife, indeed, protested that he was lovely, and she never wearied of marvelling at the unnatural conduct of those who had found it in their hearts to intrust so sweet a child to the care of strangers; though it must be confessed that nothing would have pleased her less than the arrival of two doting and conscientious parents to reclaim him.
And yet he lingered about returning to his wife in her present mood. He stuck the sharp point of his windmiller's candlestick into a sack that stood near, and drawing up a yellow canvas "sample bag " which served him as a purse from the depths of his pocket, he began to count the coins by the light of the candle.
Jan was charmed, and again and again he drew Mrs. Lake's attention to the fact that it really WAS the Cheap Jack. But the windmiller's wife was staring at the bride. Not merely because the bride is commonly considered the central figure of a wedding-party, but because her face seemed familiar to Mrs. Lake, and she could not remember where she had seen her.
This displayed a high, narrow head, on which the natural hair was worn short and without parting, and a face which, though worn, was not old. And, for no definable reason, an impression stole over the windmiller's wife that he, like her husband, had some wish to conciliate, which in his case struggled hard with a very different kind of feeling, more natural to him.
Even after a niece of the windmiller's came to live at the mill, and to wait on Mrs. Lake, the poor woman was never really content without Jan. As time went on, she wept less, but her faculties became more clouded. She had some brighter hours, and the company of the schoolmaster gave her pleasure, and seemed to do her good.
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