“Eh! he can talk fast enough, I’ll warrant me, if he had a sweetheart to talk to.” “He talk to a sweetheart! She must be a poor silly body that would listen. There are merry men and merry hearts enough in old England for the lasses to choose from, without giving ear to such as he.” “Well, they give him kind words at the Hall,--and they say he’s always more for good than harm; and I find him pleasant spoken enough when he comes to angle in the mill-pool.” “There it is! I can never make him say a dozen words, black or white; now Parson Mullins will chat free for an hour on, and tosses you off a pot of ale with good words and good will. Why, he and I have smoked many a pipe together; and he’s a clerk, and a rare scholar too. He doesn’t give you ignorant stuff o’ Sundays; but Latin, and Greek, and all the best that he has learned at college. That’s the man for my money.” “Well, father, for the matter o’ that, I like to know what folk are saying; and it might be gipsy language for all you or I are the wiser.” “I know where you got that lesson, Miss Pert; that’s what the old Puritan pedlar said the other day,--rot him! he shall take seat on the old wive’s ducking-stool if he comes this way again.” “I am sure he was a quiet civil man; and you have not had a better piece of linen, or a cheaper, than he sold us, this many a year.” “Hang his linen, and him too!” rejoined the sturdy old miller. “I didn’t like the cut of his black head;” and with that he passed into the mill, and the girl went towards the dwelling.