'That's not natural, Anne; and I am surprised to hear a young woman
like you say such a thing. Nature will not be stifled in that way.
. . .' (Song and powerful chorus heard through partition.) 'I
declare the room on the other side of the wall seems quite a
paradise compared with this.'

'Mother, you are quite a girl,' said Anne in slightly superior
accents. 'Go in and join them by all means.'

'O no--not now,' said her mother, resignedly shaking her head. 'It
is too late now. We ought to have taken advantage of the
invitation. They would look hard at me as a poor mortal who had no
real business there, and the miller would say, with his broad smile,
"Ah, you be obliged to come round."'

While the sociable and unaspiring Mrs. Garland continued thus to
pass the evening in two places, her body in her own house and her
mind in the miller's, somebody knocked at the door, and directly
after the elder Loveday himself was admitted to the room. He was
dressed in a suit between grand and gay, which he used for such
occasions as the present, and his blue coat, yellow and red
waistcoat with the three lower buttons unfastened, steel-buckled
shoes and speckled stockings, became him very well in Mrs. Martha
Garland's eyes.

'Your servant, ma'am,' said the miller, adopting as a matter of
propriety the raised standard of politeness required by his higher
costume. 'Now, begging your pardon, I can't hae this. 'Tis
unnatural that you two ladies should be biding here and we under the