"I would make my father be a miller," she replied. "But he is a miller,
I hear."

"But he is so many other things--so many. If he was only a miller we
should have more of him. He is at home only a little. If I get up early
enough in the morning, or if I am let stay up at night late enough, I see
him; but that is not enough--is it, mother?" she added with a sudden
sense that she had gone too far, that she ought not to say this perhaps.

The woman's face had darkened for an instant, and irritation showed in
her eyes, but by an effort of the will she controlled herself.

"Your father knows best what he can do and can't do," she said evenly.

"But you would not let a man judge for himself, would you, ma'm'selle?"
asked the old inquisitor. "You would judge for the man what was best for
him to do?"

"I would judge for my father," she replied. "He is too good a man to
judge for himself."

"Well, there's a lot of sense in that, ma'm'selle philosophe," answered
Judge Carcasson. "You would make the good idle, and make the bad work.
The good you would put in a mill to watch the stones grind, and the bad
you would put on a prairie alone to make the grist for the grinding.
Ma'm'selle, we must be friends--is it not so?"

"Haven't we always been friends?" the young girl asked with the look of
a visionary suddenly springing up in her eyes.