"I have to laugh at you, always talking about the place, as you are.
Why do you never speak of the mills?"
"Oh! you and the mills. I believe you cannot bear to hear them go."
"Yes, I can, thank God! might they but go night and day!"
"They have stood still now, since before Christmas."
"Folks do not grind here about Christmas time."
"They grind when there is water; but since there has been a mill at New
Stream, we have fared badly here."
"The school-master did not say so to-day."
"I shall get a more discreet fellow than the school-master to manage our money."
"Yes, he ought least of all to talk with your own wife."
Thore made no reply to this; he had just lit his pipe, and now, leaning up against a bundle of fagots, he let his eyes wander, first from his wife, then from his son, and fixed them on an old crow's-nest which hung, half overturned, from a fir-branch above.