“Speak for yourself if you are so minded, miller,” cried Hal Holmes. “Sup off the sound of a frizzle mixed with the sniff of a well-greased pan, if you so please, but give me a flake or two o' salmon flesh, good mother, the pink o' the body just showing through the silver o' the scales. Oh, a lady born is your sea salmon with her pink complexion shining among the folds o' her silver lace!” “Ay, sir, better than that your praise should be, for the fish's beauty is more than skin deep,” said the housewife, as she stood with the kitchen door half open. The miller winked at his friends when she had disappeared. “Canst better that, Hal?” he enquired. “Vanity to try,” replied the blacksmith. “A man's good enough maybe for the catching o' a salmon, but it needs a woman's deft fingers to cook it. You see through my proverb, miller?” “It needs no spying glass, Hal,” said the miller. “The interpretation thereof is in purpose that it needs a woman's nimble wit to put a finishing touch to a simple man's discourse, howsoever well meant it may be. Eh, farmer?” “'Tis different wi' pilchards, as is only natural, seeing what sort of eating they be,” said the farmer shrewdly; he found that he had been wittier than he had any notion of being, and he added his loudest chuckles (when he had recovered from his surprise) to the roaring of the miller's laughter. It was Nelly Polwhele who demanded to be let into the secret of the merriment so soon as she had returned to the room with Susan, and when the miller told her, with an illuminating wink and a shrewd nod, she laughed in so musical a note with her hands uplifted that the farmer pursed out his lips in pride at his own wit. He was not without a hope that he might find out, in the course of the evening, wherein the point of it lay. Meantime Nelly was looking anxiously around the room. “What's gone wrong wi' the girl?” said the miller. “Oh, I see how things be: 'tis so long since she was here the place seems strange to her. Is't not so, Nelly?” “Partly, sir,” replied the girl. “But mainly I was looking to see where Mr. Pullsford was hiding. You can't be supping in good style and he absent.” “Give no heed to Mr. Pullsford, whether he be here or not; spend your time in telling us where you yourself have been hiding for the past month,” cried the miller. “She has not been hiding, she has been doing just the opposite--displaying herself to the fashionable world,” said Susan. “Hey, what's all this?” said the miller. “You don't mean to tell us that you've been as far as Plymouth?” “Plymouth, indeed! Prithee, where's the rank and fashion at Plymouth, sir?” cried Nelly. “Nay, sir, 'tis to the Bath I have been, as befits one in my station in life.”