CONCLUSION
It was not long after this that the miller kept his promise. The horse was harnessed and away they drove to the town. He and Janet sat together, with Peter between them; the little boy held the end of the reins in one hand and the whip in the other, shouting and flourishing the lash about and thinking that coachmen were even better people than millers. Janet was happy too. She sat smiling and holding the tail of his coat, for fear he should overbalance himself and fall out into the road.
They left the cart at an inn, and went to see the house with its statue in the niche of the wall and carved gable-ends turned towards the street. It was now inhabited by poor families, whose washing flapped from the upper story like a row of banners over the head of the stone image. They stood on the pavement of the High Street and looked up to the giddy point of the steeple, where the weathercock twirled, more than a hundred feet in the air; they wondered at the quaint houses, with their outside staircases and their little wooden triangles of drying haddocks nailed against the wall. Then they strolled to the docks and stood at the place from which the lovely Nix had dived into the salt water. The tide lapped and gurgled against the quays, and the wind sang in the rigging of the ships alongside, and the fair-haired sailors talked in a foreign tongue, shouting to the fishwives who passed in their blue petticoats and amber necklaces along the cobbled roadway. The lighthouse stood on the promontory and the North Sea rolled and heaved outside the bar. It was a delightful holiday.
When they were tired of that they went out towards the seashore. The gulls were wheeling over the bents and sea-grass, and the sands lay smooth and fine to the edge of the waves. Little Peter rushed off to play, leaping about and throwing stones and gathering shells, while his companions sat upon the sand-dunes watching him.
“Janet,” said the miller, “I hear that your grandmother is going to leave the cottage by the pond and go away to some other place. Is that true, do you think?”
“I’m afraid so,” replied she.
“And you will go too?”
“Oh yes,” said Janet; “we have no other home.”
“But little Peter will miss his stories.”
Janet sighed. “Indeed he will,” she answered, sadly. “There is not much else we have in the way of pleasure.”
“But I can’t let you go,” the miller went on, “and what’s more, I won’t. Janet, if you’ll marry me and come and live with me at the mill-house, I’ll see that you are happy for the rest of your life. Do you think you could like me enough for that?”
“But I can’t leave Peter,” she exclaimed; “I could never be happy to think of him all alone, and perhaps being cruelly used.”
“But suppose he came too?—there’s plenty of room for him. Will you say yes, Janet, or shall we ask him to settle it for us?” said the miller. “Will you promise to marry me if he says yes?”
“I will,” said she.
And so they drove home together when the sun was getting low.
“Peter,” said the miller, “don’t you think it would be a good plan if I married Janet, and you were to come and live with me and learn to be a miller too? You should have cake for tea every other day, and a pair of fine blue trousers, and a whipping-top of your own, and a kite, and I’d tell you a new story every Sunday afternoon.”
Peter’s eyes grew round.
“And should I be all white with flour like your man?”
“From head to foot,” said the miller.
“Hooray! hooray! hooray!” shrieked little Peter, jumping about in the cart.
“Take care, take care,” cried Janet, “or you will make the horse run away.”
“That settles it,” observed the miller. “We’ll be married next week.”
And so they were.
BILLING AND SONS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD