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He brought the sample bag, without thinking of it, to the surface of his pocket, and dropped it slowly back again, murmuring, "Ten shilling a week." And as he turned again to his night's work he added, with a nod of complete conviction, "It'll more'n keep HE." Strange to say, the windmiller's idea came true in time, the foster-child was the favorite.
"'Tis the body, sure as death!" murmured the windmiller's wife; but, as she spoke, the street boys set up a lusty cheer, and Jan, who had escaped to explore on his own account, came running back, crying, "'Tis the Cheap Jack, mammy! and he's been getting married." If any thing could have rivalled the interest of a sudden death for Mrs. Lake, it must have been such a wedding as this.
Lake's experienced ears were not slow to discover that the child had got whooping-cough, which the nurse confessed was the case. She also apologized for bringing in the baby among Mrs. Lake's children, saying that she had "thought of nothing but the poor little chirrub herself." "Don't name it, mum," replied the windmiller's wife.
The top story of all held the machinery connected with the turning of the sails. Ladders led from story to story, and each room had two windows on opposite sides of the mill. Use is second nature, and all the sounds which haunt a windmill were soon as familiar and as pleasant to the little Jan as if he had been born a windmiller's son.
"Sit ye down and get your tea, and I'll come back with ye to the mill. A bit of company does folk good that's beside themselves with fretting." But the windmiller's wife was beyond such simple cure.
The windmiller's wife dared not, for her life, have told him in so many words that she thought it would be for their joint benefit if he would give a little more consideration to her wishes and opinions; but from this suppressed idea came many sharp and peevish words at this time, which, apart from their true source, were quite as unreasonable and perverse as the miller held them to be.
And only to the nurse and the windmiller's family was it known that Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby had been dipped in the mill-hopper. After the nurse and baby had left the mill, Mrs. Lake showered extra caresses upon the little Jan. It had given her a strange pleasure to see him in contact with the Squire's child.
"You shall have 'Joseph and his Bretheren' cheap," roared the hunchback, becoming more pressing as the windmiller's wife seemed slow to be fascinated, and shaking "Joseph and his Brethren," framed in satin-wood, in her face, as he advanced upon her with an almost threatening air. "Don't want 'em? Take 'Antony and Cleopatterer. It's a sweet picter. Too dear?
On the same shelf with the "Vamly Bible," before alluded to, was a real old horn-book, which had belonged to the windmiller's grandmother.
"You be used to flour seemingly," said the baker, smiling. "Was 'ee ever in a mill? 'ee seems to have a miller's thumb." In a few minutes Jan had told his story, and had learned, with amazement and delight, that the baker had not only been a windmiller's man, but had worked in Master Lake's tower mill. He was, in fact, the man who had helped George the very night that Jan arrived.
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