FAN CONSTABLE was in the drawing-room of the mill-house, awaiting the return of her brother from his last term at Oxford. A mill-house may have its drawing-room, and its son may have been at Oxford, and that not in the old capacity of a servitor, in the experience of modern England. Old Peter Constable, who had inherited from his father not only Friarton Mill and its meadows, but the chief baking business in the town of Friarton, had possessed other flour mills also, and had died a well-to-do man. He might have gone a little way off and kept a much more pretentious establishment than that of Friarton Mill, without being guilty of extravagant housekeeping for his means. But he was neither ashamed of his origin nor of his business; he was unassuming in his nature, and he was almost as proud of the old place with an instinctive unquestioning fondness, as his neighbour the Squire adored it on the last principles of taste. The miller and baker’s only son had distinguished himself as a boy in his classes at Friarton Grammar School—which was rather famous among grammar schools, and, having acquired a good name for sending up lads who took scholarships, and became in due time fellows and tutors of Oxford colleges, was eager to keep up its reputation, and, by the mouths of its masters, egged on promising pupils to go in for the prizes of learning. The case of Oliver Constable formed no exception. It seemed as if he were only fulfilling his part of the obligation, when, after having been head boy at Friarton, he went up to Oxford and immediately vindicated the propriety of the step by gaining a scholarship—though indeed his father was sufficiently well off to make no objection to paying his son’s college terms in full.