However, before Oliver could make any amends, Harry Stanhope set upon him again with his mixture of confident assertion and gay banter. ‘I should call it a shabby trick to treat us as intruders in your ranks, even if you yourself were not the greatest humbug going. A reading man and a prize man, to pretend to grind at any other stuff than Latin or Greek or German philosophy! I bet you I could do it a great deal better myself without so much as being coached beforehand. There was a song I used to sing about the miller who “was drowned in his own mill dam,” and I remember a couple of farces I have seen played on country town boards and at circuses. There was a miller of Brentford who rode like Dick Turpin, and there was a Scotch beggar who pounded a king at Cramond Brig. I could take the parts in private theatricals any day. I am not sure, indeed, whether I am not better cut out for the _rôle_ of a jolly miller than for that of a heavy farmer.’ ‘You do not know what you are speaking about,’ said Oliver, hotly, ‘if you identify _bonâ-fide_ millers with stage ruffians.’ Then he was struck with the absurdity of quarrelling with Harry Stanhope on such a count. ‘Come along with me,’ he said, abruptly; ‘I’ll show you a mill-house and my sister will give us some tea, if you don’t prefer a glass of ale.’ ‘Thanks,’ said Harry with cheerful alacrity, ‘either will be uncommonly acceptable. We are as hungry as hawks and as thirsty as washer-women. She won’t mind our muddy boots—will she? We have been trying to make out the boundaries of our fields, and it saved trouble and felt professional to walk in the ditches, instead of the growing corn.’ Oliver was dubious that Fan would mind more than the muddy boots in the unceremonious addition to her tea-table, but he was in for it, and it could not be helped.