CHAPTER I. THE WINDMILLER'S WIFE.--STRANGERS.--TEN SHILLINGS A
WEEK.--THE LITTLE JAN.

Storm without and within?

So the windmiller might have said, if he had been in the habit of
putting his thoughts into an epigrammatic form, as a groan from his
wife and a growl of thunder broke simultaneously upon his ear,
whilst the rain fell scarcely faster than her tears.

It was far from mending matters that both storms were equally
unexpected. For eight full years the miller's wife had been the
meekest of women. If there was a firm (and yet, as he flattered
himself, a just) husband in all the dreary straggling district, the
miller was that man. And he always did justice to his wife's good
qualities,--at least to her good quality of submission,--and would,
till lately, have upheld her before any one as a model of domestic
obedience. From the day when he brought home his bride, tall,
pretty, and perpetually smiling, to the tall old mill and the ugly
old mother who never smiled at all, there had been but one will in
the household. At any rate, after the old woman's death. For
during her life-time her stern son paid her such deference that it
was a moot point, perhaps, which of them really ruled. Between
them, however, the young wife was moulded to a nicety, and her voice
gained no more weight in the counsels of the windmill when the harsh
tones of the mother-in-law were silenced for ever.

The miller was one of those good souls who live by the light of a
few small shrewdities (often proverbial), and pique themselves on
sticking to them to such a point, as if it were the greater virtue