"Indeed I do," said the girl, looking up brightly; "I have longed—ah, how I have longed—all these weeks—for your mother!"
"I was thinking of myself!" said the miller heavily.
"Ah, well, that will soon be at an end," returned Claire; "I am sorry, but I did my best. I have often heard you sigh and sigh and sigh when you and I walked together of the evening. And I knew I was no company for you. I was too young and too foolish, was it not so? But now you will have your mother and your brother, the Professor, who is learned. He knows all about how to grow onions according to the methods of Virgil! He told me so himself!"
The big ex-Alcalde looked doubtfully sidelong at his little friend. He was not a suspicious man, and usually considered Claire as innocent as a frisking lambling. But now—no, it could not be. She was not making fun of him—of the man who had done all these things, who had brought her in safety by paths perilous to this new home!
So very wisely he decided to take Claire's words at their face value.
"My mother is my mother," he said, deciding that the time had come at last, and that nothing was to be gained by putting it off. "Doctor Anatole is my elder brother, and as for me, I have all the family affections. But a man of my age needs something else!"
"What, another windmill?" cried Claire; "well, I will help you. I saw such a splendid place for one yesterday, right at the top of the rocky ridge they call Frigolet. It is not too high, yet it catches every wind, and oh—you can see miles and miles all about—right to the white towers of Arles, and away to the twin turrets of Château Renard among the green vineyards. There is no such view in all the mountains. And I will go up there every day and knit my stocking!"
"Oh, if only it were my stocking!" groaned the miserable, tongue-tied miller, "then I might think about the matter of the windmill."
Foiled in a direct line, he was trying to arrive at his affair by a side-wind.
But Claire clapped her hands joyously, glad to get her own way on such easy terms.