“Those be the mill-stones, ma’am. Pretty fastish they grinds, and they goes faster when the wind’s gusty. Many a good cat they’ve ground as flat as a pancake from the poor gawney beasts getting into the hopper.”
“Oh, sir!” cried the nurse, now thoroughly alarmed, “give me the young lady back again. Deary, deary me! I’d no notion it was so dangerous. Oh, don’t, sir! don’t!”
“Tut, tut! I’ll hold un safe, ma’am,” said the windmiller, who had all a man’s dislike for shirking at the last moment what had once been decided upon; and, as the nurse afterwards expressed it, before she had time to scream, he had tucked Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby’s finery well round her, and had dipped her into the hopper and out again.
In that moment of suspense both the women had been silent, and the little Jan had gazed steadily at the operation. As it safely ended, they both broke simultaneously into words.
“You might have knocked me down with a feather, mum!” gasped Mrs. Lake. “I couldn’t look, mum. I couldn’t have looked to save my life. I turned my back.”
“I’d back ’ee allus to do the silliest thing as could be done, missus,” said the miller, who had a pleasant husbandly way of commenting upon his wife’s conversation to her disparagement, when she talked before him.
“As for me, ma’am,” the nurse said, “I couldn’t take my eyes off the dear child’s hood. But move,—no thank you, ma’am,—I couldn’t have moved hand or foot for a five-pound note, paid upon the spot.”
The baby got well. Whether the mill charm worked the cure, or whether the fine fresh breezes of that healthy district made a change for the better in the child’s state, could not be proved.
Nor were these the only possible causes of the recovery.
The kind-hearted butler blessed the day when he laid out three and eightpence in a box of the bone-setter’s ointment, to such good purpose.