Here Anne sighed, but contrived to keep down her sigh to a mere nothing.
‘Beautiful language, isn’t it!’ said Bob. ‘I was never greeted like that afore!’
‘Yes; I have often thought it very excellent language myself,’ said Mrs. Loveday.
‘Come to that, the old gentleman will greet thee like it again any day for a couple of guineas,’ said the miller.
‘That’s not the point, father! You never could see the real meaning of these things. . . . Well, then he goes on: “Whereas ye are, as it is alleged, determined to enter into the holy estate of matrimony—” But why should I read on? It all means nothing now—nothing, and the splendid words are all wasted upon air. It seems as if I had been hailed by some venerable hoary prophet, and had turned away, put the helm hard up, and wouldn’t hear.’
Nobody replied, feeling probably that sympathy could not meet the case, and Bob went on reading the rest of it to himself, occasionally heaving a breath like the wind in a ship’s shrouds.
‘I wouldn’t set my mind so much upon her, if I was thee,’ said his father at last.
‘Why not?’
‘Well, folk might call thee a fool, and say thy brains were turning to water.’
Bob was apparently much struck by this thought, and, instead of continuing the discourse further, he carefully folded up the licence, went out, and walked up and down the garden. It was startlingly apt what his father had said; and, worse than that, what people would call him might be true, and the liquefaction of his brains turn out to be no fable. By degrees he became much concerned, and the more he examined himself by this new light the more clearly did he perceive that he was in a very bad way.