“I'm no flatterer,” said the miller; “never was, and you can't please everybody. If I said your daughter took after you I don't s'pose she'd ever speak to me again.”
“The worst of it is,” said the farmer, disregarding his remark, “she won't settle down. There's young Walter Lomas after her now, and she won't look at him. He's a decent young fellow is Walter, and she's been and named one o' the pigs after him, and the way she mixes them up together is disgraceful.”
“If she was my girl she should marry young Walter,” said the miller, firmly. “What's wrong with him?”
“She looks higher,” replied the other, mysteriously; “she's always reading them romantic books full o' love tales, and she's never tired o' talking of a girl her mother used to know that went on the stage and married a baronet. She goes and sits in the best parlor every afternoon now, and calls it the drawing-room. She'll sit there till she's past the marrying age, and then she'll turn round and blame me.”
“She wants a lesson,” said Mr. Cray, firmly. “She wants to be taught her position in life, not to go about turning up her nose at young men and naming pigs after them.”
“What she wants to understand is that the upper classes wouldn't look at her,” pursued the miller.
“It would be easier to make her understand that if they didn't,” said the farmer.
“I mean,” said Mr. Cray, sternly, “with a view to marriage. What you ought to do is to get somebody staying down here with you pretending to be a lord or a nobleman, and ordering her about and not noticing her good looks at all. Then, while she's upset about that, in comes Walter Lomas to comfort her and be a contrast to the other.”
Mr. Rose withdrew his pipe and regarded him open-mouthed.
“Yes; but how—” he began.