Mr. Cray sniffed; louder, perhaps, than he had intended. “Beautiful that rose-bush smells,” he remarked, as his friend turned and eyed him.
“What is the consequence?” demanded the farmer, relaxing his gaze. “She looks in the glass and sees herself, and then she gets miserable and uppish because there ain't nobody in these parts good enough for her to marry.”
“It's a extraordinary thing to me where she gets them good looks from,” said the miller, deliberately.
“Ah!” said Mr. Rose, and sat trying to think of a means of enlightening his friend without undue loss of modesty.
“She ain't a bit like her poor mother,” mused Mr. Cray.
“No, she don't get her looks from her,” assented the other.
“It's one o' them things you can't account for,” said Mr. Cray, who was very tired of the subject; “it's just like seeing a beautiful flower blooming on an old cabbage-stump.”
The farmer knocked his pipe out noisily and began to refill it. “People have said that she takes after me a trifle,” he remarked, shortly.
“You weren't fool enough to believe that, I know,” said the miller. “Why, she's no more like you than you're like a warming-pan—not so much.”
Mr. Rose regarded his friend fixedly. “You ain't got a very nice way o' putting things, Cray,” he said, mournfully.