nfield, and then another lane, and then it is the mill. It is a jolly
fine mill; in fact, it is two--water and wind ones--one of each
kind--with a house and farm buildings as well. I never saw a mill like
it, and I don't believe you have either.

If we had been in a story-book the miller's wife would have taken us
into the neat sanded kitchen where the old oak settle was black with
time and rubbing, and dusted chairs for us--old brown Windsor
chairs--and given us each a glass of sweet-scented cowslip wine and a
thick slice of rich home-made cake. And there would have been fresh
roses in an old china bowl on the table. As it was, she asked us all
into the parlor and gave us Eiffel Tower lemonade and Marie biscuits.
The chairs in her parlor were "bent wood," and no flowers, except some
wax ones under a glass shade, but she was very kind, and we were very
much obliged to her. We got out to the miller, though, as soon as we
could; only Dora and Daisy stayed with her, and she talked to them about
her lodgers and about her relations in London.

The miller is a MAN. He showed us all over the mills--both kinds--and
let us go right up into the very top of the wind-mill, and showed us how
the top moved round so that the sails could catch the wind, and the
great heaps of corn, some red and some yellow (the red is English
wheat), and the heaps slide down a little bit at a time into a square
hole and go down to the millstones. The corn makes a rustling, soft
noise that is very jolly--something like the noise of the sea--and you
can hear it through all the other mill noises.

Then the miller let us go all over the water-mill. It is fairy palaces
inside a mill. Everything is powdered over white, like sugar on pancakes
when you are allowed to help yourself. And he opened a door and showed
us the great water-wheel working on slow and sure, like some great,
round dripping giant, Noel said, and then he asked us if we fished.

"Yes," was our immediate reply.

"Then why not try the mill-pool?" he said, and we replied politely; and
when he was gone to tell his man something, we owned to each other that
he was a trump.

He did the thing thoroughly. He took us out and cut us ash saplings for
rods; he found us in lines and hooks, and several different sorts of
bait, including a handsome handful of meal-worms, which Oswald put loose
in his pocket.

When it came to bait, Alice said she was going home with Dora and Daisy.
Girls are strange