“You do surprise me,” said the envied woman, opening a pair of pale blue eyes very wide. “And I was jist a-thinkin’ what a lucky body you was to ’ave a man as stayed at ’ome and looked arter ye. For ye can’t think ’ow lonesome I am o’ times! Dan ’e be such a favourite-like i’ the village. Somebody’s allers askin’ ’im to go along wi’ ’em drinkin’ or spreein’ one way or another. O’ course I know ’e be rare and clever. ’E wouldn’t make the mill pay as it do if ’e wasn’t. And I don’t grumble so long as it’s work as takes im out—but I do think it’s a shame not never to get a look-in at your own man till it’s time to go to sleep-like.” Mrs. Moss took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes furtively, but the baby waking at this interruption, she was forced to give all her mind to hushing it. Mrs. Hewson sat pondering. She remembered that she had once thought that life with Dan Moss would be rather a jolly affair, but if his jollity was always kept for out-of-doors, it wasn’t all beer and skittles after all. “Ye treat ’im too meek-like,” said she after a minute. “I wouldn’t mind so much.” “’Ow can ye ’elp mindin’ when ye’ve married a man?” retorted the other. “Well, I’d be cheerfuller—I’d pay ’im back a bit in ’is own coin, I be blowed if I wouldn’t,” laughed Martha. Milly shook her head. “Dan ain’t one to stand no nonsense,” said she. “I tried it on a bit when we was fust wed, and blessed if ’e didn’t up and off it for a week! Didn’t say nothink, mind you, but jist up and off it. Said it were business, but o’ course _that_ wasn’t what I wanted!” “Lor’ bless me!” ejaculated the other. “Well, I be pleased my Bill don’t give me no tantrums. We ain’t ’ad a word ever since we was wed.” “Oh, well, who said we had words? Everybody ’as their faults. We don’t ’ave no _words_,” retorted the miller’s wife, tossing her head a bit proudly. And she got up and began busying herself over the tea. She too was a little sorry she had let herself be betrayed into these confidences. Meanwhile outside, the moon had climbed the first steeps of the horizon, and had put out the last fires of the sunset; the merest memory of gold was left floating on the western clouds and yellowing the streak of clear sky above the solemn, purple downs; but in the blue overhead the moon had sway, and hung silver on the gently swaying plumes of the pines upon the hills hard by. Bill Hewson was climbing the hill in obedience to the promise given to his wife an hour before. But he was not alone; he had met Moss on the village green down yonder by the “Public,” and Moss, in his genial way, had accosted him to wish him joy of his marriage, and so it had come to pass that the two—never more than the merest acquaintances when both lived in the village—had fallen into intimate converse.