"Get away with thy blandishments," she said, for Peter had paused on the threshold to tell her that she looked like a ripe hazel-nut, her face was so brown and rosy and round. "Thee'd witch the wisdom out of my old head with thy flattery. And as for thy dadda--he cannot walk for swaggering, thee's lillied him up so handsome!" She smiled proudly into the clear-eyed face looking so affectionately into her own. Peter made her feel that she was still young and worthy of admiration. When he came home she always wore white stockings--though she thought them an extravagance at other times--and placed a flower or a bow of ribbon under her chin. She held up a kerchief that she was ironing, and said tenderly: "It will be a great day for thy father and me when we see thee consecrated, Peter." He stepped across the floor where the sunshine lay in a broad band, and kissed her. "And a blessed day when I does up thy lawn sleeves, my son. Thee must never let anyone do up thy sleeves but me, lad, not even thy wife when thee gets one. There's nobody kens the art of clear starching and ironing better than thy old mother." The young man sat on the edge of the table and swung his legs. "You'll be disappointed, mother," he said, "but I never can see myself--in spite of your dear visions--in bishop's sleeves. I'm a lazy beggar, and more likely to be lying under a tree, finding sermons in stones and books in the running brooks than beating the pulpit cushions of Durham or Carlisle." She shook her head indulgently. "Time enough, time enough," she said. "Thee's too young yet to know thy own mind." Peter looked round the kitchen and laughed. "Would you like to live in a palace, mother?" he asked. "A palace! And what would I do there?" she replied, seeing no further than the lawn sleeves which she would wash and iron. The kitchen of the mill-house was small, clean and simple. Brass fire-irons, two or three candlesticks, a burnished copper warming-pan reflected the strong sunshine, but otherwise the puritanical severity of the white-washed walls was unrelieved. The floor was strewn with river sand, and the chairs and dresser glistened with constant oiling and rubbing. On the dresser was a pile of newly-made clap-cakes, and round the fire stood an oak maiden hung with clean linen. The place had a kindly, homely smell, and Peter sniffed it with enjoyment. He loved the towers of Oxford, and the shadow of his college cloisters, but this small and sunlit kitchen, where his mother baked and ironed, and his father smoked his evening pipe, brought him back to those primitive passions of man out of which the strength of his life springs. Peter returned to the garden and continued his walk up and down the cobbled path.