‘I wonder what it could have been,’ Bob continued, wandering about restlessly. ‘You didn’t go drinking out of the big mug with your mouth full, or wipe your lips with your sleeve?’
‘That I’ll swear I didn’t!’ said the miller firmly. ‘Thinks I, there’s no knowing what I may do to shock her, so I’ll take my solid victuals in the bakehouse, and only a crumb and a drop in her company for manners.’
‘You could do no more than that, certainly,’ said Bob gently.
‘If my manners be good enough for well-brought-up people like the Garlands, they be good enough for her,’ continued the miller, with a sense of injustice.
‘That’s true. Then it must have been David. David, come here! How did you behave before that lady? Now, mind you speak the truth!’
‘Yes, Mr. Captain Robert,’ said David earnestly. ‘I assure ye she was served like a royal queen. The best silver spoons wez put down, and yer poor grandfer’s silver tanket, as you seed, and the feather cushion for her to sit on—’
‘Now I’ve got it!’ said Bob decisively, bringing down his hand upon the window-sill. ‘Her bed was hard!—and there’s nothing shocks a true lady like that. The bed in that room always was as hard as the Rock of Gibraltar!’
‘No, Captain Bob! The beds were changed—wasn’t they maister? We put the goose bed in her room, and the flock one, that used to be there, in yours.’
‘Yes, we did,’ corroborated the miller. ‘David and I changed ’em with our own hands, because they were too heavy for the women to move.’
‘Sure I didn’t know I had the flock bed,’ murmured Bob. ‘I slept on, little thinking what I was going to wake to. Well, well, she’s gone; and search as I will I shall never find another like her! She was too good for me. She must have carried her box with her own hands, poor girl. As far as that goes, I could overtake her even now, I dare say; but I won’t entreat her against her will—not I.’