Having mentioned _The Mill on the Floss_, I feel bound to say that neither in Thurswell nor Mallingham did the sporting innkeeper live who, on seeing a cheap edition of the book advertised, at once sent for it and read the greater part of it before he found out that he had been too hasty in taking for granted that it was written round a prizefight. A “mill” meant to him primarily such an incident, and his excursions into the magic realms of literature had practically been confined to the spirited accounts given incertain weekly papers of such encounters. A mill as an industrial building conveyed quite a secondary idea to him. He admitted to a friend of mine who found the book in the bar parlour, and wondered how it got he had been “had” over it, and his faith in the accuracy of literary advertisements got a severe jar. How was he to tell, he asked, that the chap meant another sort of mill? How, indeed? CHAPTER SEVEN--THE PEOPLE OF MALLINGHAM I.--THE MAYOR ONE OF THE PECULIARITIES OF MALLINGHAM is the Mayor, for Mallingham has a Mayor all to itself, except when, by virtue of his office, he spends a happy day on various County Benches, joining with the representatives of local county families in the administration of Petty Sessions justice--Petty Sessions justice is founded on “good Crowner's Quest law”--otherwise he is usually a very worthy man, and lays no specious claim to popularity. He is never ostentatious or self-assertive, and in spite of the position which he occupies, he is in private life as sound an exponent of domestic virtue as if he were an ordinary simple citizen. The eminence to which he has risen never makes him lose his head or forget that kind hearts are more than coronets, and only very little inferior to a Mayoral Chain of office. It was the proud but very proper boast of a Mayor of Mallingham that although he had been proprietor of a provision business in the very centre of the town for over forty years, and had worn the chain for two consecutive terms, he was still just as approachable as any man in the kingdom. Just as it was said in the Napoleonic days that every French soldier carried the _bâton_ of a Field-Marshal in his knapsack, and as it is said in these days in the States that any citizen may one day become President--the contingency may account for the gloomy view so many American citizens take of life--so it is understood that any burgess of Mallingham may one day become Mayor. There is, however, no competition for the office, so unambitious are the majority of the burgesses; and now and again the Council find themselves face to face with the problem of how to induce any one to accept the chain of office.