‘Now that’s not fair,’ Anne retorted, going down the garden, and leaving him alone.
About a week passed. Then one afternoon the miller walked up to Anne indoors, a weighty topic being expressed in his tread.
‘I was so glad, my honey,’ he began, with a knowing smile, ‘to see that from the mill-window last week.’ He flung a nod in the direction of the garden.
Anne innocently inquired what it could be.
‘Jack and you in the garden together,’ he continued laying his hand gently on her shoulder and stroking it. ‘It would so please me, my dear little girl, if you could get to like him better than that weathercock, Master Bob.’
Anne shook her head; not in forcible negation, but to imply a kind of neutrality.
‘Can’t you? Come now,’ said the miller.
She threw back her head with a little laugh of grievance. ‘How you all beset me!’ she expostulated. ‘It makes me feel very wicked in not obeying you, and being faithful—faithful to—’ But she could not trust that side of the subject to words. ‘Why would it please you so much?’ she asked.
‘John is as steady and staunch a fellow as ever blowed a trumpet. I’ve always thought you might do better with him than with Bob. Now I’ve a plan for taking him into the mill, and letting him have a comfortable time o’t after his long knocking about; but so much depends upon you that I must bide a bit till I see what your pleasure is about the poor fellow. Mind, my dear, I don’t want to force ye; I only just ask ye.’
Anne meditatively regarded the miller from under her shady eyelids, the fingers of one hand playing a silent tattoo on her bosom. ‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ she answered brusquely, and went away.