Quite able now to walk, and to ask a hundred questions on the way about the cause of the terror which had shaken her, and the probable duration of the hardship which had reduced her; on neither of which matters was much satisfaction to be gained from the miller.
The spring was still dry, but Mary chose to watch till the children came to take her place in the morning. The miller took charge of Mrs. Kay till she was fairly within the light of the foundry fires, and then struck across the fields homewards, hoping that his mill would not again be the refuge of frightened women while he was on the spot.
Mary’s watch was vain, and the more wearisome from her occasional fancy that it would not prove vain. More than once she was persuaded that she heard the trickling of water while listening intently after the moon had gone down; and when she fell asleep for a few moments, her thoughts were full of the hardship of having only one pitcher to fill when the water was overflowing every place. Not the less for this did she carry home this very pitcher, swinging empty at arm’s length, when the village was up and awake, and the sun beating down hot upon the slippery turf, and glaring, reflected from the stone fences, upon the dusty road.
At the door she met a neighbour, Mrs. Skipper, the baker of the village, who supplied a use for the pitcher.
“Well, Mary Kay, and what’s the news with you?”
“Nothing particular, Mrs. Skipper. Are you come to tell us again that bread is risen?”
“Why, that I am, I’m sorry to say; and I wish you would change looks with me, Mary, and then people would not taunt me as they do, when I say that bread has risen.”
“How would that alter the matter?”
“O, they talk about my being fresh-coloured, and all that, and say it’s a sign that I live of the best, whatever I may charge to others. Just as if I made the bread dear, instead of the corn being as high to us bakers as to other people; and as if there was no assize of bread in London.”
“And as if you cared for being called handsome,” added Kay from behind, having come to breakfast in the midst of the greeting.