a family!'

His father and David had returned with no news.

'Yes, 'tis as I've been thinking, father,' Bob said. 'We weren't good
enough for her, and she went away in scorn!'

'Well, that can't be helped,' said the miller. 'What we be, we be, and
have been for generations. To my mind she seemed glad enough to get hold
of us!'

'Yes, yes--for the moment--because of the flowers, and birds, and what's
pretty in the place,' said Bob tragically. 'But you don't know,
father--how should you know, who have hardly been out of Overcombe in
your life?--you don't know what delicate feelings are in a real refined
woman's mind. Any little vulgar action unreaves their nerves like a
marline-spike. Now I wonder if you did anything to disgust her?'

'Faith! not that I know of,' said Loveday, reflecting. 'I didn't say a
single thing that I should naturally have said, on purpose to give no
offence.'

'You was always very homely, you know, father.'

'Yes; so I was,' said the miller meekly.

'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 han