She lived with her widowed mother in a portion of an ancient
building formerly a manor-house, but now a mill, which, being too
large for his own requirements, the miller had found it convenient
to divide and appropriate in part to these highly respectable
tenants. In this dwelling Mrs. Garland's and Anne's ears were
soothed morning, noon, and night by the music of the mill, the
wheels and cogs of which, being of wood, produced notes that might
have borne in their minds a remote resemblance to the wooden tones
of the stopped diapason in an organ. Occasionally, when the miller
was bolting, there was added to these continuous sounds the cheerful
clicking of the hopper, which did not deprive them of rest except
when it was kept going all night; and over and above all this they
had the pleasure of knowing that there crept in through every
crevice, door, and window of their dwelling, however tightly closed,
a subtle mist of superfine flour from the grinding room, quite
invisible, but making its presence known in the course of time by
giving a pallid and ghostly look to the best furniture. The miller
frequently apologized to his tenants for the intrusion of this
insidious dry fog; but the widow was of a friendly and thankful
nature, and she said that she did not mind it at all, being as it
was, not nasty dirt, but the blessed staff of life.

By good-humour of this sort, and in other ways, Mrs. Garland
acknowledged her friendship for her neighbour, with whom Anne and
herself associated to an extent which she never could have
anticipated when, tempted by the lowness of the rent, they first
removed thither after her husband's death from a larger house at the
other end of the village. Those who have lived in remote places
where there is what is called no society will comprehend the gradual
levelling of distinctions that went on in this case at some