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Updated: June 28, 2025
When the weather was not fine enough for them to be out of doors, Abel would play with his charge in the round-house, and the windmiller never drove him out of the mill, as at one time he would have done. Now and then, too, he would pat the little Jan's head, and bestow a word of praise on his careful guardian. It may be well, by-the-by, to explain what a round-house is.
What made the winds and clouds so perverse, the clerk of the weather best knows; but there was a reason for the unreasonableness of the windmiller's wife. She had lost her child, her youngest born, and therefore, at present, her best beloved. This girl-babe was the sixth of the windmiller and his wife's children, the last that God gave them, and the first that it had pleased Him to take away.
Lake could sometimes remember things when she got into bed, but on this occasion her pillow did not assist her; and the windmiller snubbed her for making "such a caddle" about a woman's face she might have seen anywhere or nowhere, for that matter; so she got no help from him. Even the hero of a tale cannot always be heroic, nor of romantic or poetic tastes.
"What be a pocket-book, then, Master Lake?" said he, grinning, as if at his own ignorance. "Thee's eerd of a pocket-book before now, thee vool, sure-ly!" said the impatient windmiller. "I'se eerd of a pocket of hops, Master Lake," said George, after an irritating pause, during which he still smiled, and scratched his poll as if to stimulate recollection.
Master Swift's death was a great shock to the windmiller, who was himself in frail health; and Jan gave as much time as he could to cheering his foster-father. He had been spending an afternoon at the windmill, and the painter had been sketching the old church from the water-meadows, when they met on the little bridge near Dame Datchett's, and strolled together to the Heart of Oak.
He begged a bit of paper from the painter, and wrote a letter to Master Lake, which would have done more credit to the schoolmaster's instructions had it been less blotted with tears. He besought his foster-father not to betray him to the Cheap Jack, and he inquired tenderly after the schoolmaster and Rufus. The windmiller was no great scholar, as was shown by his reply:
The talking ceased as she spoke, and the windmiller appeared, followed by a woman carrying a young baby in her arms. He was a ruddy man for his age at any time, but there was an extra flush on his cheeks just now, and some excitement in his manner, making him look as his wife was not wont to see him more than once a year, after the Foresters' dinner at the Heart of Oak.
When he reached home, the windmiller and his family were going to bed, for the night was still, and the mill idle. George betook himself at once to where his truckle-bed stood in the round- house, and proceeded to light his mill-candlestick, which was stuck into the wall.
He next betook himself to George, who was slowly, and it is to be hoped surely, sweeping out the round-house. "Gearge, my boy," said the windmiller, in not too anxious tones, "have 'ee seen a pocket-book lying about anywheres?" George leaned upon his broom with one hand, and with the other scratched his white head.
All his plans were founded on the belief that he himself would live to train the boy to be a windmiller, whilst Master Swift's had reference to the conviction that "miller's consumption" would deprive Jan of his foster-father long before he was old enough to succeed him. And had the miller made his will? Master Swift made his, and left his few savings to Jan.
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