“And how then, maester?” faltered his wife.
“That child,” said the windmiller, turning his broad thumb expressively towards the inner room, “belongs to folk that want to get a home for un, and can afford to pay for un, too. And the place being healthy and out of the way, and having heard of our trouble, and you just bereaved of a little un”—
“No! no! no!” shrieked the poor mother, who now understood all. “I _couldn’t_, maester, ’tis unpossible, I could _not_. Oh dear! oh dear! isn’t it bad enough to lose the sweetest child that ever saw light, without taking in an outcast to fill that dear angel’s place? Oh dear! oh dear!”
“And we behindhand in more quarters than one,” continued the miller, prudently ignoring his wife’s tears and remonstrances, “and a dear season coming on, and an uncertain trade that keeps a man idle by days together, and here’s ten shillings a week dropped into our laps, so to speak. Ten shillings a week—regular and sartin. No less now, and no more hereafter, the governor said. Them were his words.”
“What’s ten shilling a week to me, and my child dead and gone?” moaned the mother, in reply.
“_What’s ten shillings a week to you_?” cried the windmiller, who was fairly exasperated, in tones so loud that they were audible in the dwelling room, where the stranger, standing by the three-legged table, stroked his lips twice or thrice with his hand, as if to smooth out a cynical smile which strove to disturb their decorous and somewhat haughty compression. “What’s ten shilling a week to you? Why, it’s food to you, and drink to you, and firing to you, and boots for the children’s feet. Look here, my woman. You’ve had a sore affliction, but that’s not to say you’re to throw good luck in the dirt for a whimsey. This matter’s settled.”
And the miller strode back into the inner room, whilst his wife sat upon a sack of barley, wringing her hands, and moaning, “I couldn’t do my duty by un, maester, I couldn’t do my duty by un.”
This she repeated at intervals, with her apron over her face, as before; and then, suddenly aware that her husband had left her, she hurried into the inner room to plead her own cause. It was too late. The strangers had gone. The miller was not there, and the baby lay on the end of the press bedstead, wailing as bitterly as the mother herself.