'I promise,' he said listlessly.

'It is that you won't speak to me about this for _ever_ so long,' she
returned, with emphatic kindliness.

'Very good,' he replied; 'very good. Dear Anne, you don't think I have
been unmanly or unfair in starting this anew?'

Anne looked into his face without a smile. 'You have been perfectly
natural,' she murmured. 'And so I think have I.'

John, mournfully: 'You will not avoid me for this, or be afraid of me? I
will not break my word. I will not worry you any more.'

'Thank you, John. You need not have said worry; it isn't that.'

'Well, I am very blind and stupid. I have been hurting your heart all
the time without knowing it. It is my fate, I suppose. Men who love
women the very best always blunder and give more pain than those who love
them less.'

Anne laid one of her hands on the other as she softly replied, looking
down at them, 'No one loves me as well as you, John; nobody in the world
is so worthy to be loved; and yet I cannot anyhow love you rightly.' And
lifting her eyes, 'But I do so feel for you that I will try as hard as I
can to think about you.'

'Well, that is something,' he said, smiling. 'You say I must not speak
about it again for ever so long; how long?'

'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