The innkeeper first broke the silence. "Who will now help the poor family? The pewterer would be accepted now, were he to make another proposal."
"How do you know that, innkeeper?" asked the young man, much moved, as he stepped into the centre of the room.
"Well, I heard it yesterday when I was up there helping at the preparations for the funeral. But the pewterer will not have her now, as she would not have him then."
"Yes he will, innkeeper!" said the young man. "He will have her though she were ever so selfish and bad-tempered, poor, and wretched, for such is love!"
So saying, he left the astonished innkeeper and his friends.
"Deuce take me—that was he himself!" said the barber.
"Things do not always end so happily," remarked the cooper.
"How about the clerk?" objected the barber. "No, they did not end well with him, but with the others, you know. They had, as it were, more right to live than he, the young one; for they were alive first, and he who first comes to the mill, grinds his corn first."
"The young fellow was stupid, that was the whole trouble," said the barber.
"Yes, yes," concluded the innkeeper. "He certainly was stupid, but it was fine of him anyhow."