"Moor! Watch! good dogs!" the young girl called across the yard in a coaxing voice. The dogs leaped about madly, whining as they tugged at their chains.
"What do you want?" asked the miller, rising clumsily.
She laughed gently. "I want nothing, Franz, except to say ’good-day’ to Susie and yourself."
In an instant bread, cheese, and knife were thrown down on the ground. The man was not tall,—shorter than the young girl,—and he looked up speechless into the blooming face, which he had seen last belonging to a sickly child not tall enough to reach to his broad shoulders. She used to be called the "miller’s mouse," and, swift and agile as any mouse, would follow him about the mill and granary for hours at a time; now she was mistress here, and he, the former foreman, her tenant. "Queer enough," he said, shaking his head in loutish wonder; "the eyes and the dimples in the cheeks are the same, but what a size she is!" And he measured her with shy, incredulous glances. "Aha, she gets it all from her Sommer grandmother; she was just such a white-and-red creature, and—— Be quiet, you rogues!" he interrupted himself, shaking his fist at the barking dogs. "The fellows really know you, madame."
"Better than you do; the ’size’ has not led them astray," she replied, going over to the dogs and caressing them as they leaped up upon her. "You give me a wonderful title, Franz; I have not been promoted in Dresden, I assure you."
"But the Fräuleins over in the villa are always called so," he said, doggedly.
"And you are worth ten of them. So young and rich,—so immensely rich! There’s the mill,—the finest far or near. Zounds! ’tis a prize indeed. Good gracious!—only a girl, hardly eighteen years old, and the owner of such a mill!"
She laughed. "Yes, it is mine; and a dreary life I shall lead you, old Franz. But where is Susie?"
"Keeping her room; ’tis in her right side again, poor old thing! Her own doctoring did no good, and Doctor Bruck is there now."
The girl gave him her hand and went into the house. The heavy oaken door swung to behind her with a jar that resounded from all four walls of the large hall. Beneath her feet the floor trembled and shook with the dull sound of the machinery that was heard through a low, open door in a stone-vaulted archway, and the odour of freshly-ground grain filled the air. The young girl breathed it in eagerly; a flood of memories overcame her; she grew pale with emotion, and stood still for a moment with folded hands. Yes, she had indeed loved to make herself "at home" in the mill, as the Frau President had said, and her father had often brushed the flour from her dress and braids and laughingly called her his "little white miller’s mouse." Thu stern old man, her grandfather, whom she could best remember shouting down his orders, in a harsh, authoritative voice, from the first landing of the stairs, had never loved her; she had almost always fled from his cross looks either to Susie’s bright kitchen or to Franz; and yet she now thought of him with deep regret, and wished he were just descending the stairs that had creaked beneath his heavy tread; perhaps she should no longer have feared his face, repulsive, as she now knew, with the insolence of wealth; perhaps he would have been gentler and kinder, now that she had grown like her grandmother.