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 OLIVE B CONSTABLE 
 
 TOL, I.
 
 OLIYEE CONSTABLE 
 
 MILLER AND BAKER 
 
 BY 
 
 SARAH TYTLER 
 
 AUTHOR OP ' CITOYEXNE JACQUELINE ' ' SCOTCH FIRS ' ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 
 VOL L 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1880 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 Kilo 
 
 S TO MARGARET 
 
 CD 
 
 
 1 
 
 MOTHER AND SISTER IN ONE : LOVING AND FAITHFUL FELLOW- 
 WORKER WHOSE EAGER INTEREST IN THIS STORY PROVED ITS 
 
 AUTHORS GREATEST ENCOURAGEMENT IN WRITING IT : WHOSE 
 DEATH BEFORE THE STORY WAS FINISHED DARKENED LIFE AND 
 £J WORK TO ONE SOLITARY WORKER 
 
 IN HOPE OF 
 THE TIMES OF RESTITUTION OF ALL THINGS 
 
 Oxfohd : 17^A April 1880 
 

 
 

 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OP 
 
 THE EIKST VOLUME. 
 
 CHAPTBR PAGE 
 
 I. Friarton Mill ...... 1 
 
 II. Oliver Constable's Return . . . . 2-> 
 
 III. Oliver's Announcement .... 54 
 
 IV. A Hot Argument 80 
 
 V. A Last Appeal 112 
 
 VI. Louisa and Catherine Hilliard . . . 13(5 
 VII. How Mrs. Hilliard and Catherine 
 
 JUDGED THE LAST St. GEORGE OF 
 
 Friarton 107 
 
 VIH, Oliver's Proclamation in the Mill and 
 
 the Bakehouse IDe! 
 
 IX. The New Tenants of Copley Grange 
 
 Farm 227 
 
 X. Oliver's Notion of Good Citizenship . . 274

 
 t\ 
 
 OLIVEE CONSTABLE, 
 
 MILLER AND BAKER, 
 
 -*o+- 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 PRIAKTON MILL. 
 
 Old mills which were built to be worked by- 
 water power are mostly picturesque objects in 
 the landscape. They command without fail 
 certain advantages of situation. Certainly they 
 are not likely to possess extensive views, where 
 they stand in the low lands which claim a fall 
 of water. But water is their specialty, and 
 where there is water, there is generally wood. 
 My readers must call up without any difficulty 
 VOL. i. B
 
 2 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 before their minds' eyes pleasant pictures of 
 
 such mills with their placid dams and flashing 
 
 weirs, their great mill wheels and their noisy 
 
 clappers, their dusty sacks and their equally 
 
 dusty millers, so proverbial for their white coats 
 
 as to have lent a popular name to one pollen 
 
 sprinkled auriculus. Mill and water, wheel and 
 
 man, are all set in a green leafy nook which 
 
 forms the broadest possible contrast to the grey 
 
 bare downs on which the windmill extends its 
 
 giant arms and swings its flapping sails. 
 
 Picture and song have enshrined the old water 
 
 mills from the days when Constable the painter 
 
 loved to represent on canvas such a Suffolk 
 
 mill as that which was familiar to his youth, to 
 
 the later days when Tennyson wrote his idyll 
 
 of the Miller's Daughter. 
 
 Of all mills which had their sites chosen 
 with reference to water, though the millers — 
 not anticipating Mr. Buskin's objections — had 
 long before the present day, by the help of
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 3 
 
 machinery, set seasons of drought at defiance, 
 none was more thoroughly picturesque in its 
 own line of picturesqueness, pleasanter to all 
 the senses, more homelike, restful and sweet, 
 like a thrush's 'nest or a tuft of primroses, 
 than Friarton Mill in Holmshire. It was so evi- 
 dently agreeable to the eye, and had attained 
 to such an amount of fame for this desirable 
 quality, that it had been suffered to remain 
 where it had been built in primitive easy-going 
 times, within a stone's throw of the park of 
 Copley Grange, and in full view of the manor 
 house. In fact it had been found that, after the 
 fashion of those happy accidents which create 
 leaning towers and whispering galleries, and 
 which can never be copied with any certainty 
 of success, the indifference to assthetics which 
 had made the old squire of Copley Grange 
 permit the miller of his day to erect his mill at 
 his liege lord's elbow, had been oddly enough 
 rewarded by furnishing the Squire's descend - 
 
 B 2
 
 4 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 ants or successors with one of the choicest bitl 
 of what we may call landscape vertu — a home 
 lion which, as the modern squires were not 
 needy men, and had further acquired the 
 modern culture of beauty to their finger tips, 
 they would not have lacked for a good many 
 broad acres. If the reigning miller and owner 
 of Friarton Mill had been Vandal enough to 
 propose to demolish it — which he could have 
 done since his fathers had bought it and cer- 
 tain pasture fields of the original suzerain 
 — he would have awakened the liveliest con- 
 sternation in the breasts of his social supe- 
 riors. 
 
 The loss of Friarton Mill would have gone 
 far to destroy the picturesque charm of Copley 
 Grange, with all its advantages of wood and 
 water. For, to the deep regret of its younij 
 sons and daughters, their ancestor under the 
 second George had taken it upon him witli 
 no consideration for the tastes and feelings of
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 5 
 
 his great-great-grandchildren to pull down a 
 gem of a rambling, inconvenient, half-ruinous 
 Elizabethan manor-house. And he had re- 
 placed it with a distressingly heavy, square pile 
 of masonry, in which he and the architect had 
 actually thought of little save of expressing 
 pompously their ideas of space and comfort. 
 The little which went beyond these prosaic re- 
 quirements had borne the doubtful fruit of an 
 Italian portico. It had been voted elegant and 
 classical by the contemporaries of the un- 
 fortunate squire who was thus severely re- 
 flected upon by his heirs. In a few more years 
 it might rise again into value. It might be 
 prized as a proof of past style, of the tendency 
 of the day, serving as a key to the prevalence 
 of fiddle brown in artists' work, and to the 
 choice of subjects in Eichard Wilson's paint- 
 ings, or as an indication of something else 
 equally interesting. But in the present day, 
 with which after all this generation has most
 
 6 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 to do, it was regarded as an incongruous hum- 
 bug. 
 
 The living representative of the family at 
 Copley Grange had done what he could to 
 remedy the fatal error of his ancestor. He had 
 succeeded, when he came of age, to the savin: 
 of a long minority. He was also the manager 
 in chief of a large endowment which a pious 
 and charitable predecessor had bequeathed to 
 support a Copley Grange row of almshouses. 
 By a most fortuitous circumstance, if not by a 
 clear interposition of Providence, as the young 
 Squire was disposed to think, this endowment 
 had been legally disputed, and had remained in 
 abeyance till the lawyers picked as much flesh 
 as they could off its bones, so that the rearing 
 of the fabric, which was to be emblematic to 
 all time, fell to a nineteenth century man. He 
 improved the circumstance. Instead of build- 
 ing a set of ordinary red brick cottages with 
 little cottage kailyards, which might have fitly
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 7 
 
 housed and afforded recreation to twenty old 
 Copley Grange labourers and their aged part- 
 ners, he let in a little light on the crass igno- 
 rance of the destroyer of the Elizabethan manor- 
 house, by building in the immediate vicinity of 
 Copley Grange a terrace of dainty little struc- 
 tures, all gables and mullioned windows, and 
 stacks of chimneys — with pleasure-grounds 
 having thickets and lawns to correspond, which 
 took several experienced gardeners, told off for 
 the purpose, to keep them in order. Finally 
 he built a tiny alms-house chapel on the strictest 
 principles of mediaeval architecture. The carv- 
 ing within and without, the painted glass, the 
 frescoes, the Latin texts which might have been 
 Greek or Hebrew to the daily worshippers, the 
 peal of bells, supplied a boast to the county 
 guide-book. 
 
 It is another question whether the poor old 
 bodies, whose number was now limited to eight, 
 and whose taste could hardly be supposed to
 
 8 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 have reached the stage at which that unlucky 
 forefather of the Squire's had committed his 
 solecism, did not feel far from home, aggrieved, 
 and made mountebanks of in their new quarters. 
 The arrangements, which included endless 
 draughty corners, and troublesome, perilous 
 steps up and steps down, were purely per- 
 plexing and affronting to the occupants of the 
 almshouses. These pensioners were taken out 
 of ugly houses on a level with their capacities, 
 and therefore more to their minds. The old 
 men and women, too old to learn, were elected 
 according to the reigning Squire and his wife's 
 will and pleasure, and somewhat with reference 
 to the worn-out labourers' venerable beards 
 and their wives' smooth silver braids of hair, or 
 to the couples' reasonable disposition to avail 
 themselves of blackthorn sticks and silver- 
 rimmed spectacles, as well as to their general 
 good behaviour, and what might be reckoned 
 upon in the matter of their punctual and de-
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 
 
 corous attendance at the chaplain's daily ser- 
 vices. 
 
 Naturally, perhaps, the recipients of the 
 Squire's bounty were not particularly grateful 
 for the manner of its bestowal. They were too 
 practical and hard pressed to refuse a refuge 
 which after all was far before the poor-house. 
 But old Mrs. Scud expressed boldly the secret 
 sentiments of six out of the eight women when 
 she declared she ' wished Squire's lady would try 
 a day's washing herself, and see if she would like 
 it, in a nasty cold common wash-house which 
 anybody might halve and quarter, and who 
 wanted that imperent, pushing Mrs. Webb, or 
 sly Anne Sole, to come in and take a invitory 
 of their old men's wussen shirts, and their own 
 darnedest stockings, when they had been ac- 
 customed to wash nice and comfortable in 
 private on their own warm hearth-stone where 
 nobody could come and spy, without the missus 
 of the house's leave ? Ah ! she were missus of
 
 10 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 her house in them days, and not bound to say 
 her prayers at the gentlefolks' pleasure. What 
 good could that do to her poor old soul, she 
 would like to know? It " might lend a lift " to 
 her betters' souls, since they were always in 
 luck, but forced prayers never did no good to 
 them as said them, that she would take her 
 Bible oath on.' 
 
 And old Mr. Fry (the members of the 
 stranded colony were each strictly Mr. and Mrs. 
 among themselves, unless in the case of a miser- 
 able spinster who had missed her mark, like 
 Anne Sole) daringly defined the opinions of his 
 brethren when he protested he would give all 
 1 them fandangles of shrubberies and grass that 
 were of no good save to the screeching birds of 
 the air as he was not allowed to put a finger 
 on, for his old cabbage bed, where, as every- 
 body knew, he had riz the whitest-hearted 
 cabbages in the parish, not to say for his pig- 
 stye, where, when he could do a double day 'a
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 11 
 
 work, and was well to do — never thinking what 
 he would come to — as some there could 
 bear him witness, he had fed prime pigs as 
 were a pleasure to look at.' 
 
 So it became another question whether the 
 owner of Copley Grange had altogether fulfilled 
 the intention — always supposing it to have been 
 kindly and not ostentatious or selfish in disguise- 
 — of his forerunner, as he was fully persuaded 
 he had done, while he fumed over the thankless- 
 ness and discontent of the poor, or whether he 
 had served himself and ridden his hobby to the 
 death, by way of loving his neighbour. 
 
 When all was done, the Copley Grange 
 Almshouses were only a modern antique, and 
 the Squire had too much taste not to prefer the 
 real antique of Friarton Mill, which was not 
 his property, indeed, but was set down within a 
 stone's throw of his grounds. As he took care 
 to keep on the best terms with the miller, the 
 Squire flattered himself, it was as safe almost,.
 
 12 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 as though it were in his own hand-. He was 
 at liberty to take his guests over it at all hour-, 
 in the course of the shortest of strolls, and he 
 had so managed a vista of old thorn trees 
 that the mill formed the loveliest vignette 
 from the grand drawing-room windows. 
 
 There was no inscription on the building, 
 and there is no existing architecture which 
 could decide the date when Friarton Mill was 
 built. Popular tradition, which always tends to 
 the age of good Queen Bess, as if it had been 
 golden and not iron in English annals, loosely 
 attributed that date to the mill. Undoubtedly, 
 it was so old that even its unsophisticated 
 millers had grown proud and careful of its age, 
 as a man who will ignore and trample upon his 
 years at sixty, nay, at threescore and ten, will 
 boast of them, and cherish them tenderly from 
 eighty upwards. Everything about the mill, 
 except the iron machinery which was kept out of 
 sight, was white powdered or silvery grey, or
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 13 
 
 rich brown, or toned in sage or olive green, 
 dull crimson, and dusky orange by stonecrops 
 and lichens, as no art-school design could tone 
 colours. The building stood as near the water 
 as an old Venetian palace is to its canal. The 
 site must have been untenable in an English 
 climate to any miller who was not proof against 
 the chest complaints and rheumatisms that 
 English flesh is heir to, had not the water which 
 in floods lapped the mill walls been the flow 
 just below the weir. It was always rapid in 
 its current, thus carrying off a large propor- 
 tion of its own vapour, never stagnated in pools, 
 nor, even when there was least water, dried up 
 in portions of its channel, throwing off unwhole- 
 some miasma in the process. Another protec- 
 tion to the miller and his family was, that his 
 two-storied, stone-roofed, dwelling house, built 
 at right angles to the mill, stood by the whole 
 breadth of its court back from the water where 
 the ground rose, and a natural drainage filtered
 
 14 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 away the damp in the soil. Actual evidence 
 removed all reproach of slimy or mildewed un- 
 wholesomeness from Friarton Mill, or, for that 
 matter, from the mansion-house of Cophv 
 Grange, which stood only a little farther from 
 what was still called ' the Brook,' or * Buller's 
 Brook.' No races of men or women in the parish 
 had been, in the memory of the oldest Friarton 
 man (and he was to be found in the Copley 
 Grange Almshouses), stronger and longer-lived, 
 in the main, than the two families which had for 
 generations dwelt in the mill and the manor- 
 house. 
 
 On the face of the mill, as it fronted the 
 water, opening from the second story, was a 
 curiously carved wooden gallery, such as one 
 meets with in Nuremberg and some of the older 
 German towns. It had been intended originally 
 to hold sacks of corn or flour, which were 
 hoisted up or lowered down by a crane from, 
 or to, the narrow road-way — only broad enough
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 15 
 
 at the widest to hold a single farm cart with 
 its horses — that interposed between the mill and 
 the water. The gallery had become obsolete 
 for this purpose, having been superseded by- 
 other and ampler contrivances on the other side 
 of the mill ; and a great willow tree had been 
 allowed to grow up and still farther impede the 
 road- way, which it narrowed to a footpath, as 
 it spread out its roots, and flung across its 
 higher branches until they drooped over the 
 water. But the respect which had been de- 
 veloped for every sign of the mill's antiquity 
 not only saved the gallery from destruction, but, 
 in order to keep up its character, caused it to 
 be occasionally used still, as a place of deposit 
 for floury sacks. It was more frequently 
 employed as a point of vantage which the 
 miller could appropriate — a place for smok- 
 ing his pipe and staring at the water 
 beneath his feet ; where the gentle folks 
 from Copley could come and loiter and gaze
 
 16 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 abroad into the recesses of Copley Grange Park, 
 which was only divided from the mill by the 
 Brook and a sunk fence. 
 
 The park was by no means large, but the 
 ground was undulating, and, furnished with 
 patches of bracken, old thorns, brakes of hazel 
 and blackberry, and some magnificent oaks and 
 beeches, it formed of itself dells and dingles, 
 which had the appearance of stretching far 
 and wide. 
 
 At two seasons of the year the view from 
 the gallery of Friarton Mill which did not ex- 
 tend beyond the park, and had the objection, 
 if you will, of being shut in, ' tame and doim 
 tic,' formed at the same time a nearly perfect 
 bit of woodland, while the well ' seasoned ' 
 Georgian house, with the Italian facade in the 
 foreground, stopped short of being an eyesore. 
 In late spring, when the tender green of the 
 beech and oak contrasted with the sombre 
 green of the fir, and was relieved by the
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 17 
 
 white blossoms of the wild crab and pear 
 trees ; when the gnarled hawthorn bushes, in 
 the dim light of early morning or late twilight, 
 stood crowned like ' aged men,' or in the glory 
 of noon bent like veiled brides ; when clusters of 
 red May and the spikes of the red-flowered 
 chestnut — introduced to compete with the native 
 trees — lent a half tropical brilliance to the sweet 
 English purity of the colouring ; when the turf 
 below was here and there pale gold with 
 primroses or misty blue with hyacinths ; when 
 bJackbirds and thrushes sang openly and un- 
 blushingly to their mates on every spray, and 
 the cuckoo's note and the ringdove's call 
 sounded from hidden hollows ; when the first 
 nightingale made night tuneful and poured out 
 his passion till it rose in liquid clearness above 
 the monotonous rush and tinkle of the waters, 
 then Copley Grange Park, and Friarton Mill 
 were at their second best. For the autumn 
 suited them even better than the spring, nothing 
 vol. i. c
 
 18 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 could surpass the exquisite rich mellowness and 
 tender delicacy when the ripe brown chestnut 
 was dropping from its husk on the water-of- 
 Nile coloured grass, in the dullness of October ; 
 when the five fingers of the chestnut leaves and 
 the vine leaf of the maple were burning in maize 
 colour; when the oak was russet, the beech 
 and wild cherry crimson darkening into purple 
 or streaked with scarlet ; the birch and the elm 
 straw and daffodil colour ; when the bracken 
 was rusty ; when only the trill of the robin and 
 the distant bark of a dog broke the stillness of 
 the earth resting from its labours with a curtain 
 of haze falling between it and the dappled sky. 
 But in winter also, when Buller's Brook was 
 hanging with icicles, and ' roaring and reaming* 
 after it had broken its frozen bounds, and the 
 grass was sere, and the boughs of the ti\ 
 stood out bare and black, unless where the 
 sunlight caught those near at hand, and 
 brought out their furry greys, and the bine
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 19 
 
 bloom of a plum, hovering about the twigs and 
 bourgeons ; or when they were feathered with 
 hoar frost or panoplied with snow, standing out 
 in dead cold masses against the leaden grey of 
 the clouds — the park, as seen from the mill 
 gallery, was not to be despised by any hardy 
 sight-seer who could face with fortitude be- 
 numbed toes and tingling fingers. 
 
 The court before the mill-house had its own 
 tree, a round-headed bushy mulberry tree, 
 while the house itself was covered with several 
 old-fashioned rose bushes, including a monthly 
 rose which did not wait for June, but sent out 
 its china pink buds early in May, and went on 
 obligingly, supplying large instalments of 
 various shades of magenta-coloured, faintly 
 smelling roses, from month to month, till 
 November, if the winter were not a hard one. 
 The other roses, noisette and a crimson — acquir- 
 ing a duller purple tinge, perhaps the nearest 
 approach to 'blue roses' in fading — adhered 
 
 c 2
 
 20 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 strictly to June and July for flowering in one 
 blow, but they made up as much as possible 
 for their unbending character in this respect 
 by pouring forth, when they did blossom, a 
 prodigal wealth of roses, which in their turn 
 discharged a perfect avalanche of crumbled 
 petals into the court and on the breast of the 
 brook, that ran, for days at a time, pied like a 
 daisy, impartially divided into the colours of 
 York and Lancaster, as other rivers have run 
 yellow with gold or red with blood. One side 
 of the house would show sumptuous crimson 
 without a green leaf for a whole fortnight, when 
 it was not a rainy summer ; and as for the ivory 
 white noisette roses, the half-blown buds and 
 flowers on a branch could be counted by the 
 fifty, and a single cluster would fill one of 
 Fan Constable's crazy, tottering flower-gin- 
 At one time the older of these rose tn 
 with the ' mulberry bush,' as it was called, had 
 served for a flower garden to the mill-house, as
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 21 
 
 the bough of a tree or a few stones on the 
 stage used to stand for a forest or a rocky pass. 
 Then the dwellers in the mill-house became 
 less primitive in their notions, and not so 
 easily satisfied. The miller's wife had her 
 border round her court with daffodils and 
 carnations, sweet-williams and sun-flowers in 
 their order, until at last the border merged 
 into a walled garden, which, in addition to its 
 apricot-trees and its early peas and potatoes, 
 had its dahlia and salvia beds, and its frames 
 for raising geraniums and verbenas, all of them 
 not so far behind the terraces and green-houses 
 at Copley Grange. 
 
 But full of living beauty as Friarton Mill 
 and Copley Grange were, their owners did not 
 escape the curse of humanity, and the dead 
 were lying at the same time both in the mill- 
 house and the grange. Old Peter Constable 
 had paid his last debt, and been gathered to his 
 fathers — full of days and of such honours as an
 
 22 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 honest, active useful life cannot fail to gather ; 
 and the Squire's wife had inherited so little 
 strength that she had died, worn out with sus- 
 taining the dignity and refinement of her station 
 and with bearing three children, before she had 
 attained her twenty-fifth year.
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 2 
 
 Q 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OLIVER CONSTABLE'S RETURN. 
 
 Fan Constable was in the drawing-room of the 
 mill-house, awaiting the return of her brother 
 from his last term at Oxford. A mill-house 
 may have its drawing-room, and its son may- 
 have been at Oxford, and that not in the old 
 capacity of a servitor, in the experience of 
 modern England. 
 
 Old Peter Constable, who had inherited 
 from his father not only Friarton Mill and its 
 meadows, but the chief baking business in the 
 town of Priarton, had possessed other flour 
 mills also, and had died a well-to-do man. He 
 might have gone a little way off and kept a
 
 24 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 much more pretentious establishment than that 
 of Friarton Mill, without being guilty of ex- 
 travagant housekeeping for his means. But 
 he was neither ashamed of his origin nor of 
 his business ; he was unassuming in his nature > 
 and he was almost as proud of the old place 
 with an instinctive unquestioning fondness, as 
 Iris neighbour the Squire adored it on the last 
 principles of taste. 
 
 The miller and baker's only son had distin- 
 guished himself as a boy in his classes at 
 Friarton Grammar School — which was rather 
 famous among grammar schools, and, having 
 acquired a good name for sending up lads who 
 took scholarships, and became in due time 
 fellows and tutors of Oxford colleges, was eager 
 to keep up its reputation, and, by the mouths of 
 its masters, egged on promising pupils to go in 
 for the prizes of learning. The case of Oliver 
 Constable formed no exception. It seemed as if 
 he were only fulfilling his part of the obligation,
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 25 
 
 when, after having been head boy at Friarton, 
 he went up to Oxford and immediately vindi- 
 cated the propriety of the step by gaining a 
 scholarship — though indeed his father was suf- 
 ficiently well off to make no objection to paying 
 his son's college terms in full. 
 
 Old Peter Constable continued to have no 
 scruple on the point of maintaining his son at 
 Oxford, because at the end of Oliver's first 
 term there occurred a passage between the 
 father and son which may sound incredible, 
 but which actually had a precedent, that ap- 
 peared in print in the life of a Scotch earl and 
 his heir. The miller, like the old Earl of 
 Elgin, feeling highly gratified by his boy's, 
 success, thought to reward it by sending him 
 as big a cheque as the elder man felt justified 
 in giving over and above the younger man's 
 income, bidding him spend that in any manner 
 which might please him best. And the young 
 miller, like the young earl, returned the cheque
 
 -26 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 with a grateful acknowledgment of the kindness 
 of the intention, and an announcement that he 
 had no use for the money; he was amply 
 provided with the sinews of war already ; he 
 would rather the sum were spent in procuring 
 some special pleasure for the father, who was 
 frugal and self-denying in his personal habits, 
 or for the sister Fan, who, being a girl — and 
 an only and motherless girl — needed particular 
 indulgence. It remained to be proved whether 
 the young miller would follow up his extra- 
 ordinary moderation by a career in any respect 
 parallel to that of the patriotic statesman. 
 
 But in spite of Peter Constable's pride and 
 •confidence in his son from the beginning, it had 
 not been without a certain ruefulness that the 
 man had consented to the single lad of the 
 •Constables' household forsaking the old path, 
 which in Peter's eyes was the safest and 
 pleasantest in the world, and which had been 
 trodden smooth — as it were, sprinkled white —
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 27 
 
 for young Oliver by his father, grandfather, and 
 great-grandfather. The Constables were not 
 of a rank to go beyond a great-grandfather, 
 but there had been at least three generations of 
 them in Friarton Mill and Friarton bakehouse, 
 and mill and bakehouse had flourished under 
 the Constables' rule, and had been known far 
 and wide for as unadulterated, well-ground 
 flour, and as honestly kneaded bread as could 
 be expected from fallible men. The staff of 
 life, preserved as nearly as possible intact, had 
 proved a boon to the community, while the 
 community in its turn had rewarded its faith- 
 ful servants by becoming their steady patrons. 
 
 Of course the mill and the bakehouse must 
 pass away from the family if Oliver developed 
 into a scholar and gentleman, unless, to be sure, 
 Fan married a miller and baker, winch did not 
 seem likely. On the whole, fully sensible as 
 Peter felt that Oliver was a credit and even an 
 honour to his people, the miller would a good
 
 28 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 deal rather that his son had remained in his 
 own rank of life, and taken over from his failing 
 hands the old mill, which was the next thing 
 to 'parent, child and wife' in its owner's 
 estimation. 
 
 Events had not so shaped themselves, while 
 Peter Constable was modest, just, even gene- 
 rous. He would not set up his judgment 
 against the combined opinions of those who 
 ought to know better — the learned masters 
 and parsons of Friarton Grammar-School. Old 
 Peter would not let his prepossessions and 
 prejudices stand in the way of Oliver's rise in 
 life, if Oliver chose to rise ; though to Peter's 
 mind such an ascent was very often neither 
 a comfortable nor a creditable process. He 
 would not constrain the lad to sacrifice an 
 ambition which, with his gifts, might be natural 
 and proper in him, in order to maintain old 
 landmarks. 
 
 As for Oliver, he responded plastically to
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 29 
 
 the promptings of his early teachers. He was 
 keen on colleges and college-learning with all 
 the power and delight which those ideas then 
 involved for him. And the child Fan was 
 even more enthusiastic than her brother on 
 the associations and attainments he was entering 
 upon. She set herself with the pertinacity and 
 absence of reasonable calculation of a woman, 
 from the day Oliver left for college, to qualify 
 herself for being, at no distant day, the worthy 
 sister and fit companion of a great don — a 
 dignitary high up in the Church, or an honoured 
 judge. 
 
 So Peter tried also to accommodate him- 
 self to the will of Providence and the force of 
 circumstances. He was too old, indeed, to 
 begin a course of training in order to figure 
 suitably as the father of one of the magnates 
 whose laurels were so quickly and easily won — 
 in Fan's imagination. He knew full well, that 
 though his boy as yet was the same to him,
 
 30 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 and came home in the long vacation, rather to 
 Fan's disgust, unforgetful of and imdisgnsted 
 with a single homely detail of the old life, 
 though Oliver was, as he had ever been, 
 perfectly natural and unaffected, and would 
 lend a hand to make up accounts and to help 
 his father with the management of the large 
 business and many servants in every way in 
 the young man's power, still in the course of 
 time Oliver's widely different occupations must 
 separate father and son. 
 
 Even already, in the midst of the son's 
 staunchness to first ties, the father recognised 
 with a curious mixture of fatherly pride and 
 sharp twinges of pain, in spite of his fatherly un- 
 selfishness, the certain consequences of Oliver s 
 withdrawal from handicraft or trade and ab- 
 sorption in the pursuit of learning, and in the 
 companionship of the class with regard to 
 which Peter, in spite of his sagacity, folly 
 believed the pursuit of learning was the regular
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 31 
 
 business of the members' lives, unless when 
 they took a little bodily recreation in the form 
 of cricket, or boating, or sport. Oliver might 
 be as humble and hearty as he liked, but he 
 was growing in the very tone of his voice, and 
 carriage of his head, and movement of his 
 hand, more and more of a gentleman, like the 
 Squire and his friends. The boy could not 
 help himself; it was to his credit that he 
 should, like good wood, take on polish so rapidly. 
 But though he would never turn his back on 
 his father, the men would gradually grow 
 strange and shy as companions to each other. 
 All the more reason, Peter thought bravely 
 and disinterestedly, for him to make matters as 
 smooth and easy to Oliver when he should 
 come after him, his father, as the old miller could 
 contrive. There were certain things which he, 
 Peter, could still do better than his clever r 
 cultivated son, and it was some indemnification 
 to Peter for his own loss to do them for Oliver.
 
 32 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 Peter sold advantageously the leases of the 
 mills he had taken on in addition to Friarton, 
 and laid up the purchase-money in the funds, 
 where it would be no trouble, but a decided 
 boon, to a gentleman and scholar, as well as to 
 Fan. Peter was on terms for the sale of the 
 baking business, but he could not find it in his 
 heart to dispose of Friarton Mill, though he 
 knew he should always find a ready buyer in 
 the squire of Copley Grange, who would wil- 
 lingly suffer Peter to stay on as tenant in the 
 place for the rest of his fife. But the miller 
 fancied Oliver might care to retain the mill, 
 letting it to a tenant who should reserve 
 quarters for the landlord if ever he liked to 
 revisit the mill-house. 
 
 Death stepped in and settled all the ar- 
 rangements before Peter had come to an end 
 of his plans for his son's greater ease and well- 
 being. The miller died peacefully with Oliver 
 sharing Fairs watch by their father's pillow,
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 33 
 
 raising, for an interval of relief on the broad 
 young breast, the bowed shoulders on which 
 the young man, as a child, had so often ridden 
 triumphantly, and receiving reverently and ten- 
 derly the last fluttering sigh. 
 
 In those first days of mourning little had 
 been said of Oliver's future line of life, which 
 had still remained so far undecided at the 
 time of his father's death. As a matter of 
 course, Oliver had returned to Oxford to finish 
 his term and take his degree, which he did with 
 all the eclat that had been expected from him, 
 winning a first class, and immediately after- 
 wards returning to Friarton Mill — his first 
 return since his father's death — with Fan 
 awaiting him to do what she could to make up 
 for the absence of another face and voice by 
 lavishing upon her brother her unbounded con- 
 gratulations. 
 
 It was the month of June, one of the two 
 seasons when Friarton Mill was the nearest to 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 an Arcadia. Enough of time had passed for 
 Fan Constable to be comforted for her old 
 father's death. She was able to hail her 
 brother's arrival on the heels of his achieve- 
 ment, with all it implied to her, in a spirit of 
 exalted approbation. She was anxious to do 
 him all the honour in her power, and she dis- 
 played her anxiety according to her instincts 
 and training. 
 
 It was the fashion in Friarton to say that 
 Fan Constable was a worldly-minded as well as 
 an unjustifiably proud and assuming young 
 woman. But Fan expressed herself on this 
 occasion in a sufficiently simple manner. She 
 conned a cookery book, and tormented the 
 miller's old housekeeper to cook a dinner, 
 which Sally Pope said might have been another 
 funeral or wedding feast ; and farther exas- 
 perated Sally by bidding her serve it at a late 
 hour. In the meantime Fan repaired with all 
 her belongings to the drawing-room, which
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 35 
 
 had not been her ordinary sitting-room. She 
 had previously dressed herself in her best 
 gown of dim black silk and crape, with its 
 sweeping train, and she now sat down to look 
 out for Oliver with an impatiently throbbing 
 heart. 
 
 That drawing-room had been inaugurated 
 by Fan, and yet it did not reflect her character 
 in the slightest degree. It was a singularly 
 colourless, pointless room, and Fan's was not a 
 colourless or pointless nature. Fan's taste had 
 been just so far educated as to have reached 
 the chill circle of negation. She was able to 
 reject with aversion the stuffy crowd of incon- 
 gruous, inconsequent tables and chairs, the 
 tawdry or glaring vulgarity of ornament in the 
 houses of the wealthier tradespeople, and even 
 of the condescending professional people of 
 Friarton, with whom her visiting-list began and 
 ended. Therefore there was none of the embar- 
 rassment of more than doubtful riches apt to 
 
 B 2
 
 36 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 distinugish third- or fourth-rate drawing-rooms 
 in the room at Friarton Mill. There were 
 no Berlin wool or bead monstrosities, no 
 ' table books ' overpoweringly gorgeous, like 
 the Queen's Lifeguards, in scarlet and gold 
 bindings ; no terrible specimens of art in water- 
 colours or chalks, no china chimney vases 
 painted coarsely in all the colours of the rain- 
 bow, and reckoned very handsome jars by their 
 complacent possessors ; no starched tangles of 
 w^hite cotton, crackling at every touch, on the 
 backs of chairs and sofas, or on the faces of little 
 tables, attaching themselves without permission 
 to the collars of coats and the sleeves of gowns. 
 Fan knew better than these attributes of half 
 civilisation went, but her knowledge stopped 
 short there, and only served to reveal her re- 
 maining amount of ignorance. And she was & i 
 afraid of compromising herself in her ignorant 
 that she restricted herself as severely in her 
 drawing-room as though she had been a social
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 37 
 
 Puritan : she ventured on little or nothing beyond 
 the absolutely necessary rosewood tables and 
 cane seats of the simplest form, the carpet and 
 hangings of the most subdued tint and pattern, 
 the plain cottage piano with its heap of music, 
 not in admired disorder, but in deliberate tidiness 
 in the background, — the attenuated flower- 
 .glasses which would only hold the most atten- 
 uated bouquets. The one error which Fan had 
 allowed herself to fall into, was still on the side 
 of colourlessness and coldness. There was a 
 large mirror over the plain white marble chim- 
 ney-piece which reflected and intensified with 
 a stony, topographical correctness the dim, 
 meagre effect of the room. 
 
 There could not have been a wider contrast 
 between the interior and the world without, to 
 which the room ought to have had an affinity, 
 between the natural homeliness and affluence of 
 sweet beauty and gaiety in the Friar ton Mill 
 surroundings, and the artificial vow of perpetual
 
 38 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 frigidity and austerity — according to which 
 Fan's drawing-room was arranged. 
 
 1 That drawing-room of Fan Constable's i- 
 another version of the glacial theory,' Mrs. 
 Hilliard, the most privileged and liveliest woman 
 in Friarton, used to declare, with a shrug of her 
 shoulders and a real shiver. 4 It is the bondage 
 to starvation of rising gentility.' 
 
 Fan was perfectly conscious of a deficiency, 
 while she would rather lay herself open to a 
 charge of something lacking in her room, than 
 to the countercharge of false adornment. But 
 she was not sensible that the chief and unpar- 
 donable defect was the absence of all trace of 
 human joy or sorrow, all touch of human cha- 
 racter and token of individual bent, which 
 might have redeemed the barest room ; and that 
 it was the sense of uneasiness and uncertainty, 
 of doubting and halting on the threshold of a 
 new order of existence which rendered the at- 
 mosphere of this room repellant as well as cold.
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 39 
 
 Mrs. Hilliard was speaking a certain amount of 
 nonsense when she added that Fan's room con- 
 tained the last drawing-room suite advertised 
 by Maple or Shoolbred, weeded to death, since 
 neither Maple — nor Morris himself — could have 
 adequately supplied the fatal weakness of that 
 room. 
 
 But Fan's own presence did something to 
 enrich it. Fan in her sweeping mourning 
 was a small, fine-featured, keen-eyed, dark- 
 haired, restless little woman, whose tempera- 
 ment was the reverse of lymphatic, who had 
 none of the facile, mindless, heartless sweetness 
 that would have added the last mawkish offence 
 to the other offences. How a creature like Fan 
 could exist even for an hour at a time in such 
 a domestic desert, how she could fail to impress 
 on it some token of her ardent identity, only 
 proved the strong self-restraint, the determina- 
 tion of purpose of which the girl was capable. 
 
 Fan was idle this afternoon as she was rarely
 
 40 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 idle, since her energy, like that of Michael the 
 Wizard's little fiends, demanded a constant field 
 for its operation ; and as she was inclined to 
 treat with withering contempt all the poor little 
 girlish fancy-work which had ever come under 
 her notice, she was notable, for her years, in 
 household management, and practical in femi- 
 nine wisdom. Fan could have kept the house, 
 and regulated and overlooked the menage very 
 nearly as well as Sally Pope — in fact she did so 
 when Sally would let her — and this is no small 
 testimony to Fan's talents, for old Sally Pope 
 was an experienced and efficient, if conceited, 
 housekeeper and cook. Not a girl in Friarton, 
 not one of the well-born vicar's daughters, 
 who had each received an excellent education, 
 seen something of the great world, was clever 
 in her own way, and knew herself compelled to 
 make the most of her allowance for dress and 
 minor expenses, could spend that allowance more 
 judiciously in every respect than Fan Constable
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 41 
 
 — who might have been supposed to revel in 
 rude abundance — could dispose of her private 
 income. Not a girl, hardly a matron in the 
 parish, was so available for choir-practising, 
 school teaching, managing the details of chari- 
 table clubs as Fan Constable had already proved 
 herself, — facts which the vicar's wife, and the 
 mistress of Copley Grange, when she was alive, 
 knew right well. 
 
 Fan acted more from general good principles, 
 and, perhaps, in some measure, unconsciously 
 from policy, than from a purely benevolent 
 temper. Yet at the most unexpected seasons, 
 and in circumstances which were not so much 
 out of the common as to warrant an exception 
 to the rule, Fan Constable would suddenly 
 amaze and overcome her coadjutors by a burst 
 of womanly tenderness, deep, wistful and self- 
 accusing, perfectly irresistible in such a woman. 
 
 It was by dint of her early strength of will, 
 and of something sterling in her earnestness even
 
 42 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 when the game did not seem worth the candle, 
 quite as much as on account of her father's 
 purse and a credulous faith in her brother's 
 genius — with the future honour which it might 
 reflect on Friarton, that Fan had been lifted 
 over the heads of her compeers and promoted 
 to a somewhat difficult footing, for which it is 
 needless to say that she had to bear much 
 obloquy, in a rank of society considerably above 
 what was the original sphere of the owners of 
 Friarton Mill. 
 
 Fan could not work on the eve of what she 
 was firmly persuaded must be one of the great 
 crises of her life. Oliver was coming home 
 crowned with the only laurels he could have 
 gathered; and Fan had the entire sympathy 
 with the gathering which belonged to the con- 
 sciousness that she too was capable of enterpri-e 
 and application, though not in securing such 
 triumphs as Oliver had won. Fan knew per- 
 fectly that she was not clever in one sense ; she
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 43 
 
 was even slow where book-learning was con- 
 cerned. Of course, she had by perseverance 
 mastered the obstacles which had lain in the 
 way of her becoming a fairly well-educated girl, 
 after her father had been induced to send her 
 to good schools both at home and abroad ; and 
 she had striven hard to cultivate her mind and 
 taste still farther, so as to become a tolerable 
 companion for Oliver — one of whom he need 
 not be ashamed when educated men and refined 
 women were his daily associates. 
 
 Still the truth remained that Fan was not 
 intellectual — like Catherine Hilliard at the 
 Meadows, or Lucy Houghton, the vicar's eldest 
 daughter, who might have made some pre- 
 tence to enact ' sweet girl-graduates.' None 
 could be better aware of what she lacked in 
 this respect than Fan, who had even an inor- 
 dinate value for the attainments in winch she 
 failed — who felt only the more called upon,, 
 with a half-pathetic meekness and humility in
 
 44 OLIVER CONSTABLE 
 
 5 
 
 the middle of her pride and high spirit, to sup- 
 port Oliver's dignity by the sedulous exercise 
 of the faculties Providence had given her. She 
 believed she was lady-like, she knew she was 
 sensible, she felt none could be more deeply 
 attached to Oliver and his interests. She was 
 prepared to prove an excellent mistress of his 
 establishment and manager of his household 
 expenses, so long as he needed her. What 
 was still stronger evidence of her devotion, she 
 was prepared to vacate the post she craved, 
 for the consummation of her wishes, on a 
 suitable marriage on Oliver's part. Of course 
 Oliver ought to marry and marry well, winch 
 would be a help to his social position. Then 
 her services would no longer be required, and 
 — well, she might possibly marry in her turn. 
 
 Oliver was coming home to Friarton Mill, 
 but there was little likelihood that he would 
 stay there. He might already have formed his 
 plans — whatever they were Fan was ready to
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 45 
 
 give in her adherence to them. She had no 
 desire to remain at Friarton Mill ; she had, on 
 the contrary, a great inclination to get away 
 from all that hampered her and would hamper 
 her brother. She was a woman of strong and 
 faithful family affections, but she was as nearly 
 as possible without local attachments. She had 
 a feeling for beauty — rather in form than in 
 colour, bat she was not possessed with the 
 admiration which Friarton Mill frequently 
 called forth. She rather resented its ardent ex- 
 pression to her, as some Scotchmen resent the 
 enthusiasm many foreigners entertain for them 
 in the light of the countrymen of Eobert Burns 
 and Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 She did not at all approve of the shape 
 the furor took ; and she kept herself out of the 
 way of those visitors from Copley Grange, who, 
 in spite of the hints of the Squire, were too 
 stolid in their superior rank to understand that 
 Fan was not the typical miller's daughter and
 
 46 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 were fain to patronise her under an altogether 
 erroneous impression. 
 
 Such gratuitous patronage would fill Fan 
 with an intensity of indignation and affront 
 so far beyond what the offence deserved, that 
 the wrath became ludicrous in its anti-climax. 
 It was the new order of things, it was the 
 coming dignity, it was Oliver the chief bestower 
 of the dignity, that were all affably patronised 
 in the person of Fan, and Fan had to be angry 
 for the whole. 
 
 At last Oliver turned into the court, walking 
 and carrying his bag from the station as usual 
 — ' as if nothing had happened,' Fan exclaimed 
 to herself, with a quick shade of vexation, 
 while she ran downstairs to welcome him on 
 the threshold. 
 
 There was little family likeness between the 
 brother and sister, as there were few points in 
 unison in their characters, beyond what existed in 
 their uprightness and the depth of regard between
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 47 
 
 the two — who, so far as near kindred was 
 concerned, stood alone in the world and were 
 all in all to each other. Certainly Oliver was 
 spare as Fan was slight, and there was a little of 
 a worn look about the young man's thin face, 
 which testified to the work of nervous energy 
 there also. But he was big and Fan was little. 
 His hair was brown, straight, and already thin. 
 Hers was black, wavy and luxuriant. He had 
 a ruddy tinge in the brown of his complexion 
 which no burning of the midnight oil — and he 
 had burned it in his time with a young man's 
 superb recklessness — had served to rout. Fan's 
 complexion was the clear paleness often found 
 in a brunette. 
 
 But the greatest contrast in Oliver and Fan 
 Constable's features was found in the eves, 
 though in both brother and sister these were 
 brown. Fan's had the hazel tint and the keen 
 observation combined with the shyness of a 
 pheasant or a partridge's eye. Oliver's eyes
 
 48 OLIVER COXSTABLi:, 
 
 were darker in hue, and though they were not 
 without repressed fire, had much of the brood- 
 ing reflectiveness — verging on doggedness — of 
 the ox's eye. 
 
 Oliver Constable was firmly knit, and ought 
 to have carried himself as easily, and with as 
 natural a grace, in his broad-shouldered height, 
 as Fan did in her low stature. But the pecu- 
 liar neatness and daintiness of personal be- 
 longings which constituted not only a crowning 
 distinction but a ruling passion in Fan, so that 
 slovenliness and disorder caused her absolute 
 pain, were wholly absent in her brother's case. 
 There could not have been the remotest chance, 
 even supposing he had been a short instead 
 of a tall man, of his worst enemies calling 
 Oliver c dapper ' or ' smug/ as some of Fan's 
 k dear friends ' chose to term her ' natty ' or 
 c trim.' 
 
 But although Oliver wore the grey morning 
 suit which has replaced the ' purple ' in con-
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 49 
 
 nection with the ' fine linen ' in the dress of a 
 Dives or a duke, which is at once perfectly 
 unassuming and perfectly good of its kind, the 
 miller's son and heir suffered from an innate, 
 incurable personal negligence, such as besets 
 some men in all ranks and in all nations — only 
 the defect in an Englishman belonging to one 
 of the upper classes is free from the repulsive 
 element of uncleanliness which is aot to attend 
 on the Bohemian negligence of a foreigner. 
 
 Fan was chronically distressed by this flaw 
 of negligence in Oliver's idiosyncrasy. She 
 had made a searching analysis to discover its 
 origin, in the course of vigorous attempts to 
 overcome the weakness, but she had been no 
 more able to reach its root than she had suc- 
 ceeded in shaking its influence for a day. It 
 was not that Oliver was so ill-made that his 
 coats and trousers would not sit properly on his 
 figure, for he was really a handsome man if he 
 could have done himself justice. It was not 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 that the habits of a gentleman did not come 
 naturally to him, and had not been long 
 practised by him. For that matter their father, 
 who had never aspired to be more than his 
 father had been before him, had shown himself 
 a tidy old martinet in his ways — just as she, 
 Fan, could not bear a pin out of its place, 
 long before she was subjected to school training. 
 Yet here was Oliver, who had enjoyed every 
 advantage since he was a mere lad, who was, as 
 Fan owned willingly, more fastidious than her- 
 self in all essentials of manly and womanly 
 good breeding, in non-essentials a picture of 
 helpless, hopeless disorder from the crown of 
 his head to the sole of his foot ; with the shifting 
 hat or cap on the drifting clouds of brown hair 
 which no close clipping of barber could keep a 
 week in its place ; with his crumpled collar, his 
 loosened, twisted necktie, his eccentric cuffs — 
 one of which would disappear up his coat- 
 sleeve, while the other would out-herod fashion
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 51 
 
 by hanging not merely over his knuckles, 
 but nearly to the tips of his fingers. The last 
 offence was in his boots, which, let Oliver buy 
 them from the prince of honest and accom- 
 plished boot-makers, in the course of a week or 
 two, took to disreputable curling up at the toes 
 and going down at the heels, with an air of 
 being hard upon the parting of upper leather 
 and sole, and of affording an irresistible attrac- 
 tion to mud and dust,- like the sorriest hob- 
 nailed shoes of any day-labourer. 
 
 All this in a young, handsome, college-bred 
 man would have been unpardonable if there 
 had been any cure for it ; but Fan in her des- 
 pair was profoundly conscious there was none. 
 She might call Oliver to account every hour of 
 the day, as a mother who is a disciplinarian may 
 lecture a careless hoyden among her daughters. 
 Oliver would take her remonstrance in perfect 
 good humour, but he would not be a bit 
 the better for it. She might quote for his 
 
 E 2 
 
 U. OF ILL LIB.
 
 52 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 benefit with cutting sarcasm the old tripping 
 compliment to the very wildness of abandon 
 in woman's dress — 
 
 ' Hair loosely flowing, dress as free ; 
 Simplicity more taketh me, — ' 
 
 and ask him if he thought that applied as well 
 to a man's toilet? 
 
 Oliver would laugh and put up his hand, 
 with a sense of guilt, to his dishevelled mous- 
 tache, then let it travel further to the Bicquet- 
 like tufts of his hair. He would look down 
 with too tranquil deprecation at the handkerchief 
 dangling by one end from his pocket. But 
 though hair and handkerchief were remedied 
 for the moment, they would be in a worse con- 
 dition twenty times before the day was done. 
 
 Oliver was also spasmodically awkward in 
 his gestures, a peculiarity sufficiently noticeable 
 in a well-made man who had taken his share of 
 muscular exercise and learnt the noble art of 
 self- defence.
 
 MILLEE AND BAKEE. 53 
 
 Fan's consolation was that Oliver, though 
 the reverse of a puppy or even alas ! of an 
 Adonis, was still unmistakably a gentleman in 
 his most extraordinary gaucheries ; and when 
 he was roused and in earnest, his passion and 
 determination mastered his mixture of indiffer- 
 ence and nervousness, until the bodily move- 
 ments responded to the spirit within, and 
 acquired a certain untrammelled dignity and 
 power.
 
 54 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 Oliver's announcement. 
 
 The brother and sister met with the ' Here I am, 
 Fan,' and the ' So you've got home, Oliver,' of 
 the thoroughly English brother and sister, who, 
 however cordially attached and however much 
 they may have to say to each other on par- 
 ticular occasions, rarely exceed such words — ac- 
 companying the grasp of the hand, and the kiss 
 on the cheek, even on meeting after months of 
 separation. Effusive speech and lavish caresses 
 are not for the true representatives of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race. 
 
 Oliver, in writing to his sister, when his 
 name was in the prize list, had so far forgotten
 
 MILLER AND BAXER. 55 
 
 Jhis origin as to let his pen slip into the short 
 regretful sentence, 'He would have been 
 pleased that I had not missed the mark.' But 
 even on paper he did not further specify the 
 tie, and now Oliver gave no sign of remem- 
 brance, that it was the first time he had come 
 home and failed to receive his father's greeting. 
 For the old man was yet alive, though on 
 his death-bed eagerly watching for his son, 
 when Oliver obeyed the summons which had 
 last brought him to Friarton Mill. It did not 
 follow by any means that Oliver forgot the 
 past, though he remained dumb as he followed 
 Fan to her room. 
 
 ' Do you sit here now, Fan ? ' he asked his 
 sister with a little surprise, and an involuntary 
 tone of disappointment. But even as he 
 spoke, he began to reproach himself privately 
 for the question — so like a man's blundering to 
 put it, within the first moment of his arrival too.
 
 56 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 To be sure poor Fan still found the old sitting- 
 room too full of sad memories to be en- 
 countered without an effort. How could he, 
 even in imagination, have condemned a girl to 
 sit alone where the old family circle had been 
 formed, with a dreary sense of a blank never to 
 be filled up, in one corner, and in one chair, 
 constantly present to her mind ? It mattered 
 little what room they occupied just then, and 
 only a stupid, thoughtless fellow would have 
 drawn attention to the change, thus carelessly 
 probing the wound. 
 
 Oliver hastily directed the conversation to 
 something else, without waiting for an answer- 
 to his question, and in doing so accepted the 
 new domestic arrangement without protest — all 
 the same his thoughts had been dwelling 
 vaguely but persistently throughout his railway 
 journey on the familiar low-browed room. 
 The local attachments, which did not exist for 
 Fan, approached to a passion in Oliver's nature.
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 57 
 
 He had seen, without trying to see them, his 
 father's big chair and ponderous writing-desk, 
 opposite which Fan's little table and work- 
 basket used to stand. He had contemplated 
 idly and half absently as if he had been on the 
 spot, the high wooden chimney-piece painted 
 grey, and having in relief, only in stucco un- 
 fortunately, clusters of wheat ears — as if the 
 chimney-piece had been designed expressly 
 for a miller and baker's hearth — the corner 
 cupboards, the odd nondescript article of 
 furniture in old mahogany which was 
 neither side-board nor side-table, nor cabi- 
 net, but which had the handiest shelves, the 
 roomiest drawers conceivable. At this season 
 the purplish red roses were budding in such 
 profusion round the windows of the old parlour, 
 that if a high wind came when the roses were 
 in full bloom, their petals would — as Oliver had 
 seen them before — be stripped off, and swept in 
 a stream on the faded worsted moss of the carpet
 
 58 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa. There were 
 seats in the windows on which Oliver had 
 often gathered up his long legs and disposed of 
 his arms in an attitude the most excruciating to 
 the eye of the spectator, yet the most restful 
 to the body of the performer. Oliver had been 
 addicted, from boyhood, to employing these 
 low window ledges as convenient steps to the 
 court, a practice which obviated any trouble of 
 opening and closing doors. He had been prone 
 to sitting half in half out of a window, with his 
 legs dangling to the ground ; when he occupied 
 the post in June, he had felt himself like an old 
 Greek crowned with roses, and as it was his only 
 chance of such a distinction he had borne with 
 stoicism sundry pricks and scratches from 
 aggressive stems, and faced philosophically the 
 dropping of rose leaves — possibly of earwigs 
 and ladybirds — within the collar of his coat. 
 
 Oliver was exceedingly fond of the old 
 parlour, and he was decidedly not fond of Fan's
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 59 
 
 drawing-room ; at the same time he was cast 
 in a different mould from the Squire of Copley 
 Grange. Oliver had his own views on aesthetics 
 as on everything else, but the pattern of a wall- 
 paper or the tone of a carpet did not cost him 
 agonies. He was not always calling out for 
 calm and repose and key notes. His residence 
 in Oxford had no doubt cultivated his taste 
 without his knowing it, but the training had 
 failed to beget in him a special mania — apart 
 from intrinsic beauty or pleasant associations — 
 for old oak and blue china, Venetian glass, or 
 Queen Anne needlework, unless the last were 
 the homely old garden-flower which bears that 
 name. Now, as it had more than once occurred 
 to him, if Fan had been in some of the men's 
 rooms, and had possessed rooms of her own, 
 she would by this time have been engulfed 
 beyond the redemption of her natural taste in 
 a charmed region of dim and soft hues, faded 
 colours and faint tracery varied by bold inter-
 
 60 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 jections ; she would have sat surrounded by 
 mystic dados, quaint Indian and Japanese 
 matting, stately Jacobian chairs, gorgeous 
 peacock's plumes and sunflowers. Yet it was 
 Oliver and not Fan — as both were aware — who 
 was imaginative and susceptible. Except where 
 her prominent bump of order was concerned, it 
 was he and not she, who was sensitively affected 
 by the surroundings ; above all it was he who 
 was tenderly faithful to his first love in house- 
 hold gods, as in inanimate nature. 
 
 Oliver and Fan Constable talked at dinner 
 of the hundred-and-one nothings which the 
 members of one family, meeting after some 
 months' separation which has not divided the 
 speakers in more than space, find to interest 
 them. Oliver took occasion to remark, apropos 
 of the dinner itself, that Sally Pope had not lost 
 her skill, and that he was quite able to do jus- 
 tice to her fried soles and lamb cutlets thouuh 
 he had dined at Paddington. He had not
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 61 
 
 meant either to try Sally's patience, or to keep 
 Fan's dinner waiting. He had intended to 
 €ome in for her tea. 
 
 ' I don't mind dining late, indeed, I greatly 
 prefer it,' said Fan with decision ; ' and since 
 — since poor father is gone,' it was an effort for 
 her still to get out the words, though she 
 showed no inclination to cry, — she was not the 
 ordinary sort of woman, who is given to ex- 
 press her deepest feelings in tears, — ' we have 
 not his tastes and habits to think of first. 
 There is no need for you to dine early after 
 you have been so long accustomed to dine late 
 in hall.' 
 
 'The hour for dining in hall is not consi- 
 dered late feeding-time now-a-days,' said Oliver, 
 carelessly ; * but it is a great deal too late for me,' 
 he added, with more interest. ' I am not like 
 you, Fan ; I detest dining late. I stick to one 
 o'clock as the hour which appetite, common 
 sense, the testimony of our ancestors, and the
 
 62 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 practice of our continental neighbours have all 
 agreed to honour. I know what you are going 
 to say, that noon is the correct time. Well, I 
 don't object to anticipate matters ; dining at 
 noon is nearly the only mediaeval custom, about 
 the restitution of which, with advantage, I am 
 quite clear.' 
 
 ' I was not going to propose dining at 
 noon,' denied Fan, emphatically ; ' it would be 
 an exceedingly inconvenient arrangement, un- 
 less households rose at daybreak again.' 
 
 6 And why not ? ' inquired Oliver, inno- 
 cently. 
 
 'Why not, indeed?' retorted Fan, with 
 lively impatience. * It is sufficient they don't, 
 and few people would like to form solitary 
 exceptions. You may try it yourself if you 
 like ; not that I mean to say you're a bad riser 
 as it is.' 
 
 ' I don't often see the sun rise in summer, ' 
 acknowledged Oliver, penitently, as he carved
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 63 
 
 Sally's piece de resistance. He carved badly — 
 worse than his father had carved, causing Fan, 
 who was an expert in such feats, to fidget and 
 marvel afresh. But Oliver himself was not in 
 the least put out by his deficiency in table ac- 
 complishments. 
 
 6 If sunrise is so well worth seeing in Swit- 
 zerland/ continued Oliver, ' it cannot be wholly 
 unworthy of our notice here, as our actions 
 seem to imply.' 
 
 1 But if you get up in time for the sunrise, 
 you must be content to go to bed with the sun/ 
 said Fan ; ■ when all your neighbours are widest 
 awake and fullest of life.' 
 
 6 There's the rub,' admitted Oliver, shaking 
 his finely-proportioned head, with its towselled 
 thatch ; ' but there ought to be some compen- 
 sation.' 
 
 ' I don't think you men, wise as you are,, 
 take consequences into consideration sufficiently," 
 dogmatised Fan.
 
 64 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 ' My dear child, don't treat us to ironical 
 flattery, though I grant ours is a belated kind 
 of wisdom, so that we have to go to you women 
 to make it practical for us. There was Greatorex, 
 one of our tutors, who kept me in company in 
 groaning over dinner in hall not being supper 
 and the winding up of the day at once, sup- 
 posing we were condemned to eat a meal in 
 common. You will say the remedy was in 
 Greatorex's hands as well as in mine, but he 
 never found it till he married a nice young soul 
 who condescended to work out his theory for 
 him. He has his dinner now at the time he ought 
 to have eaten his lunch, but generally forgot or 
 made a muddle of it. He is saved from be- 
 coming an ignoble martyr to mingled starvation 
 and dyspepsia quite as much as to work. He 
 has his evening stroll or his book, and his wife's 
 music by his own fireside in winter, when other 
 men are at table, where he can join them for a 
 little variety when he chooses.'
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 65 
 
 'Ay, the little variety when he chooses, 
 which no doubt will be pretty frequently, makes 
 all the difference in the world,' said Fan, drily. 
 4 But I thought, Oliver, men could not work 
 after dinner ? ' 
 
 1 Can't they ? ' questioned Oliver, with equal 
 dryness. ' What ! not after an hour's rest such 
 as a labouring man takes ? Why, they do it 
 every day they live when they eat a sufficient 
 meal and call it luncheon. If they eat less it is 
 at the peril of their health, with the temptation 
 to gorge in the evening.' 
 
 4 But head work, Oliver, head work,' remon- 
 strated Fan. 
 
 ' Is much like other work,' maintained 
 Oliver, stoutly. ' It is not head work which 
 stands in the way. Are you such an innocent 
 as to suppose that head work is the engrossing 
 occupation of the mass of the men at Oxford, 
 or, for that matter, the mass of late diners? 
 You may as well say prayers and have done 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 with it. Bless you, Fan, I wish you saw some 
 of the drags coming into the town, or watched 
 the men in their boats at every hour of the 
 twelve save the dinner-hour. True, many of 
 the undergraduates do their reading on the 
 water, only the subjects of study are apt to 
 consist of the " Field "or " Bell's Life," or the 
 fastest, trashiest novel.' 
 
 ' But you read, Oliver,' protested Fan, al- 
 most indignantty, for she had not so many 
 cherished visions that she could afford to have 
 one demolished in this cool manner. 
 
 ' Oh yes, I read,' he asserted, as the simplest 
 matter of course. 'There are always some 
 fellows who sap, some men whose business and 
 pleasure are made up of reading under any 
 circumstances. And I may give it as my ex- 
 perience that a proportion of the reading men 
 are of my mind and Greatorex's. How I did 
 envy Greatorex going home to eat his wholesome 
 little early dinner — call it a dinner of herbs, if
 
 MILLER AXD BAKER. 67 
 
 you like — in peace, tete-a-tete with his wife, in 
 his own little dining-room ; returning to Mrs. 
 Greatorex's cheerful, pretty tea-table, walking 
 with her, having his book, and his lounge, and 
 smoke, his song and his chat afterwards ; sup- 
 ping with his family, perhaps bidding a solitary 
 beggar like me, who did not go in much for 
 riotous " wines," share his supper, like a 
 Christian and a gentleman.' 
 
 'But "the feast of reason and the flow of 
 soul," the very spirit of the feast, there would 
 not be room for that, Oliver ? ' It was character- 
 istic of Fan that she never contracted her 
 brother's name. 
 
 6 " Oceans of room," according to Traddles 
 the immortal. Where there is a will there is a 
 w T ay, Fannikin. Besides, you are referring to a 
 rare sort of spice, not often to be found at any 
 dinner, " late or ear'," as Sandy Carmichael 
 would say. Now you are the lady of the 
 house, will your ladyship let me carry the 
 
 r 2
 
 68 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 claret, and the strawberries, and biscuits over 
 to the mill gallery ? It is the hour, as a hundred 
 poets have sung in a thousand styles of verse, 
 as well as the season for enjoying the cream of 
 out-of-door delights, including beetles and bats 
 — but I'll smoke the last away to a respectful 
 distance if you object to them. Don't let us 
 lose more of the first evening, and Fan, what 
 an evening ! The sun is not to say shining on 
 us, he is setting for us, like an affable, royal old 
 fellow, at the height of his June splendour. 
 Come along, Fan.' 
 
 She would much rather have gone to the 
 drawing-room, but, to do her justice, she had 
 always humoured Oliver in trifles. She went 
 with him without apparent reluctance, only 
 trying in vain to make him leave the transfer- 
 ence of the wine and fruit to the housemaid, 
 whom Fan had drilled into a deft and dexterous 
 table-maid. 
 
 4 No, no! ' Oliver would have his way ; ' you
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 69 
 
 go before, and I follow after. Imagine your- 
 self a lady of the last century, Fan, with a 
 black boy grinning, and covetously eyeing the 
 best strawberries in the dish, at your heels. 
 
 Then she had to wait a little impatiently 
 till he exchanged a jesting compliment with 
 Sally Pope, who had smoothed her ruffled 
 plumes, put on her afternoon gown, and was 
 ready to waylay and have a word with the 
 young master on his return, as he passed across 
 the court. Had she not done so, unquestion- 
 ably Oliver would have repaired to Sally's 
 region of the house before the end of the 
 
 evening. 
 
 'Welcome home, Master Oliver, the sisht 
 of you is good for an old woman's eyes,' Sally 
 hailed him. 
 
 'Of course, Sally, and ain't I growing a 
 handsomer fellow every day ? As for you, why 
 you look a dozen years younger than you did 
 last summer. You'll be having the banns put
 
 70 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 up, and coming upon me for a wedding-present 
 before I have time to think what it shall be/ 
 
 ' Come, now, Master Oliver, none of your 
 young man's chaff — and me old enough to be 
 your granny,' remonstrated Sally, with great 
 relish of the stale joke. 
 
 Fan was considerate of Sally's claims where 
 they did not interfere with the girl's own plans. 
 She was substantially kind to the old woman, 
 and Sally, like everybody else who came in 
 contact with Fan, had a just respect and regard 
 for her young mistress. Notwithstanding this 
 laudable sentiment, Sally looked upon life in 
 the light that it was alike her duty and privilege 
 to bear her testimony against the crying sin 
 and folly of new-fangled, upstart ways, and to 
 resist them to the utmost of her power. The 
 opposition was fruitless ; Miss Fan got the 
 better of the old housekeeper, and Sally was 
 Lot without a secret, half-grudging admiration 
 of the girl's capacity for ruling.
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 71 
 
 But the old servant entertained a totally dif- 
 ferent kind of pride in Master Oliver — of fond- 
 ness half-protecting, half-reliant for him. She 
 detained him at this moment entirely with his 
 own will, though to the chagrin of his sister. 
 
 Fan could not understand Oliver's accessi- 
 bility to servants, and his ease with them. She 
 was tempted to think he did not know and 
 keep his own place where they were concerned. 
 On the other hand, this conclusion did not 
 coincide with some of her independent observa- 
 tions. Fan had a candour and liberality of ob- 
 servation, in spite of her essential narrowness 
 and concentration of mind, which forced her 
 often to remark effects that puzzled her in her 
 rooted convictions. Fan had learnt from local 
 gossip that there was something of the same 
 bearing as that of Oliver towards his servants 
 in Mr. Ayott of Copley Grange to his confiden- 
 tial and superannuated gamekeepers and nurses. 
 She could not be altogether sure that the sim-
 
 72 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 plicity and geniality were not among those 
 secrets of good breeding which were somehow 
 beyond her acquisition. Certainly no servant 
 abused Oliver's frankness and bonhomie. 
 
 The brother and sister stood in the twilight 
 darkness of the oldest room in the mill, empty 
 at this hour. Oliver would have paused again 
 to make comments on what machinery w r as 
 dimly revealed, and what store of grain could 
 be faintly discerned. But Fan, who had never 
 from her childhood cared for such details, 
 nipped his intention in the bud and dragged 
 him on. ' You said you wanted to be in the 
 open air, dear ; don't stay in this musty- fusty 
 place, where I always dread rats/ Then they 
 went out into the gallery. 
 
 Oliver pulled out a pile of new sacks to 
 serve as a seat for Fan, and converted a full 
 sack into a pedestal to support the tray he had 
 carried. For himself he was content to loll 
 on the old carved railing, hunching up his
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 7 
 
 o 
 
 shoulders, sinking his head in his breast, 
 thrusting out his bearded chin, squaring his 
 moustached mouth, and blinking with his 
 brown eyes, contriving altogether to look as 
 like a dwarf or humpback, with the gro- 
 tesquely ugly face which would have served 
 for a gurgoyle, as a stalwart, comely English- 
 man could well look. 
 
 At the couple's feet flowed the Brook, over 
 which the long pendent boughs of the great 
 willow drooped and swayed and dipped their 
 leaves — the blue-green of which was whitened, 
 yellowed, and stained with olive in the water. 
 Before the two stretched the undulating bosky 
 park of Copley Grange, with the rich foliage of 
 its fine trees still in the gay vivid green of June, 
 before it has grown dull, heavy, and mono- 
 tonous under the heat of Julv, with the red 
 and white clusters of the thorns competing with 
 the red and white spikes of the chestnuts. The 
 sun was sinking like a ball of fire in the gold
 
 74 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 and crimson west, where all the magnificence 
 of the sky was still gathered, leaving what had 
 been the dim soft blue of a midsummer day, 
 for a moment, by contrast, cold in its purity in 
 the east. 
 
 No nightingale yet lifted up his voice and 
 poured forth his fervent appeal, but a whole 
 chorus of thrushes and blackbirds spoke and 
 answered in their hearts' content. Occasionally 
 the continuous gurgle of the water was broken 
 and accentuated by the leap of a trout or the 
 splash of a water-rat. 
 
 Oliver looked and listened in silence for 
 some time, turning his face to the sunset light. 
 Then he suddenly, and as it were, involuntarily, 
 took off his cap, and the radiance about his 
 head brought out threads of chestnut and gold 
 in his brown hair. 
 
 He drew a long breath — a kind of sighing 
 keigho ! as with a depth of enjoyment that by 
 reason of its very depth had a strain of sadness
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 75 
 
 in it, because of the shallowness and transitori- 
 ness of all human pleasure, and then announced, 
 confidentially, that people ought not to boast, 
 but he believed Friarton Mill in its own 
 peculiar line beat England, beat Europe hollow 
 for beauty. 
 
 1 Yes, it is beautiful here,' said Fan, quietly, 
 with her eyes turning naturally to the pillars 
 and arcades of that unfortunate Italian front 
 to Copley Grange, seen at the end of the vista 
 directly opposite the mill, f I know judges 
 object to the house, and Mr. Ayott cannot bear 
 it. If he had money enough he would pull it 
 down and begin rebuilding to-morrow. They 
 know best, no doubt, and I am prepared to be 
 told it is bad taste in me, but the house always 
 strikes me as stately and imposing.' 
 
 'I was not thinking of the house,' said 
 Oliver ; ' but I don't see why it should not be 
 allowed a sort of English classicism, though of 
 course its Italian classicism is humbug here.
 
 76 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 It is not without associations, — calls up George 
 Lord Lyttelton and Johnson's " Lives of the 
 Poets." ' 
 
 ' Not to me,' said honest Fan ; ' but I 
 wonder,' she persisted, sticking to her idea, 
 and desiring, without changing the conversa- 
 tion abruptly, and putting a point-blank 
 question with brutal plainness, to lead the talk 
 to the great point with which she began to 
 think Oliver was dallying, seeking to keep it 
 in the background, ' I wonder you are so little 
 critical of Copley Grange and so much in love 
 with Friarton Mill after you have been at 
 Oxford.' 
 
 Oxford was Fan's Eome or Jerusalem. She 
 had visited Oxford more than once in Com- 
 memoration Week, and though that was hardly 
 the proper season at which to estimate aca- 
 demical glories, it had been enough for her 
 to see her brother at home among distinguished 
 men and refined women. Fan secretly hoped
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 77 
 
 that Oliver's destination, with her own in his 
 company, would be Oxford. In spite of what 
 he had told her, his university town still stood 
 to her in the light of the capital of the great 
 English empire of letters — not a Bohemian 
 empire, but such a dignified, decorous, learned 
 empire as Fan's soul loved, to which Oliver had 
 a birthright and title, to which his claim would 
 be Fan's passport. Nowhere else, she fancied, 
 could they without pretence get into such good 
 society, escaping finally from the penalties of 
 the most unvarnished trading antecedents. 
 
 ' Everything in its own place,' said Oliver, 
 lightly. ' I am fond of my " 'Varsity," too — of 
 every stone of my college. I think Cambridge 
 is the only place worthy of being named in the 
 same breath with Oxford. I do not give a rap 
 for the pretensions of Salamanca, or Padua, or 
 Paris, or Heidelberg, or Zurich, or Edinburgh, 
 matched with those of Oxford and Cambridge. 
 I am as besottedly proud of my " 'Varsity " as
 
 78 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 an Oxonian and a John Bull can be. But 
 after all, my connection with it, though I shall 
 never forget it, was a passing accident com- 
 pared to my life-long connection with this 
 place.' 
 
 Fan's hopes fell a little. Oliver's words, 
 however appreciative of his ' 'Varsity,' did not 
 indicate an intention of returning to it and 
 settling in it. ' I am afraid it will cost you a 
 pang to leave Friarton Mill,' suggested Fan, 
 still feeling her way to her object, as the sin- 
 cerest woman will sometimes. 
 
 8 But I am not going to leave it,' said 
 Oliver, with quiet assurance, staring down into 
 the water, as if in contradiction of the words 
 which the poet had put into its mouth — . 
 
 ' Men may come and men may go, 
 But I go on for ever.' 
 
 1 At least, not so long as I can help it, I hope/ 
 Oliver corrected himself quickly ; ' not till I
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 79 
 
 have to make that exodus which lies before 
 every mother's sou of us/ 
 
 'My dear boy, what are you thinking of? ' 
 Fan was driven to ask, in discomfited surprise 
 and bewilderment. ' Father was not able to 
 make you independent of a profession. You 
 may, indeed, become one of the masters of the 
 Grammar School in the town here. But oh ! 
 Oliver, I am sure it would be a great mistake. 
 The Fremantles and the Wrights,' naming the 
 families of two of Oliver's old patrons among 
 the masters, 'have been kind, but even they, 
 while they are ready to acknowledge your 
 honours, don't forget that you are the son of a 
 tradesman.' 
 
 'They are heartily welcome to remember it,' 
 said Oliver, with perhaps more heat than there 
 was occasion for. ' What ! deny our father, 
 Fan, who never did a thing to be ashamed of? 
 which is what few men's sons in any rank can 
 say. It is my turn to wonder. My origin is
 
 80 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 the last thing I should wish my associates to 
 forget if I were to become a master in Friar- 
 ton, which I have not the slightest intention of 
 being.' 
 
 4 You know that is not what I meant,' pro- 
 tested Fan, growing pale with reproach and 
 excitement ; 1 1 loved and honoured father with 
 all my heart, Oliver, you know I did. And it 
 js no dishonour to his memory to say that 
 while I am proud to think he had qualities far 
 above those of an ordinarv tradesman, I am 
 sorry he had to go into trade, and to continue 
 in it all his life.' 
 
 8 1 don't know what you call an ordinary 
 tradesman,* said Oliver ; ' but though I am per- 
 fectly aware that you were the best of daugh- 
 ters, Fan, — I would not for a moment think of 
 questioning it, — I must in common truth blame 
 you for inconsistency. My father, who was as 
 you say all his life in trade, had not the opinion 
 of it which you appear to hold ; and I must say to
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 81 
 
 look upon trade as degrading, is rather an odd 
 way, though you don't intend it, of honouring 
 the man who was pleased to be the miller and 
 baker of Friarton.' 
 
 ' Father was an old man who belonged to 
 another generation than ours,' Fan defended 
 herself. 
 
 ' I have no doubt there were as many fools 
 in the past generation as in the present,' 
 growled Oliver, not very politely, but his spirit 
 was beginning to kindle into a flame. 
 
 4 He got on in the world,' continued Fan, 
 paying no attention to the growl. ' Our starting- 
 point, thanks to him, is not what his was. He 
 was willing that you should go to Oxford and 
 become a scholar and gentleman. 
 
 ' Yes, God bless him ! ' said Oliver, shortly. 
 
 ' After all I cannot think what we are argu- 
 ing about ; ' Fan took herself back with a faint 
 smile. ' Over what you imagine is my under- 
 valuation of trade — but that is past so far as we 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 are concerned. And I promise to respect any 
 profession you may choose, Oliver.' 
 
 ' I am not going in for any profession,' said 
 Oliver, still a little moodily. He was a man by 
 nature eager for the sympathy of those he cared 
 for, though he was not dependent upon it, and he 
 knew he would get no sympathy from Fan in 
 what he was about to do, therefore he had 
 instinctively put off to the last moment telling 
 her his intention. 
 
 ' Are you going abroad then ? ' inquired 
 Fan, with her heart sinking fathoms deeper than 
 at its first disappointment. 
 
 Was Oliver, her only brother, all that she 
 had in the light of mere kindred, deliberately 
 purposing to cut himself off from her ? He pro- 
 fessed to put small weight on his advantages ; 
 but was he meaning to let them — as in the case 
 of so many men who rose in the world — be the 
 means of creating a snilf between him and the 
 single person who represented his relations and
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 83 
 
 his early life? Which of the two was the 
 inconsistent person ? 
 
 Oliver penetrated so far into Fan's sus- 
 picions — they were altogether unjust, but they 
 were too cruel towards herself for him to resent 
 the reflection they cast on him. 
 
 6 My dear Fan, didn't you hear me say I 
 was going to live and die at Friarton Mill ? ' 
 he contented himself with putting it strongly. 
 
 1 But what are you to do here ? ' demanded 
 Fan, in a voice half mystified, half sharp. She 
 felt a little relieved ; but such a terrible 
 suspicion was rising in the background of her 
 thoughts that it threatened not merely to cloud 
 her returning serenity, but to overwhelm it 
 more entirely even than the apprehension of her 
 brother's forsaking her had done. Oliver at 
 his best had always been somewhat incompre- 
 hensible to Fan, unmoved by the things which 
 keenly affected her, powerfully worked upon 
 by influences which did not touch her. They 
 
 G 2
 
 84 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 had always been an affectionate brother and 
 sister, but in some respects they had never 
 been of one mind and soul from babyhood 
 upwards ; she felt at this moment of doubt and 
 alarm that she could not venture to predict 
 what Oliver might not do or leave undone at 
 any crisis of his history. 
 
 ' Of course be a miller and baker, like all the 
 heads of the family I ever heard of,' said Oliver, 
 trying hard to look and speak as if he were not 
 aware that he was inflicting a shock on his 
 sister. But the fact was he was agitated in 
 giving his decision, and he showed the amount 
 of his agitation, by relinquishing the bodily 
 contortions in which he was prone to indulge. 
 He stood up tall and straight facing Fan, merely 
 thrusting his hands into the depths of his 
 pockets, as he proceeded to unfold his inten- 
 tions. ' I shall bolt the cleanest flour, and 
 bake the purest bread, and have my finger in 
 the capital and labour pic — there is an appro-
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 85 
 
 priate figure for you ; and as bread is the staff 
 of life, and the capital and labour question one 
 of the most vexed questions of the day, I 
 should think the duties and interests involved 
 will last my time.'
 
 8G OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A HOT ARGUMENT. 
 
 1 You will never do it,' gasped Fan, rising to her 
 feet also. 
 
 6 Yes, I will,' said Oliver, now perching 
 himself precariously on the ancient carved 
 railing. c I mean what I say and I will do what 
 I mean.' 
 
 'What! waste all your talents and educa- 
 tion ? ' 
 
 1 I should not call them wasted ; "the better 
 man the better deed." If I have any talent out 
 of the common — ' 
 
 ' You know you have ; what is the good of 
 mock humility ? ' poor Fan assailed him.
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 87 
 
 ' Well, granted I am not a blockhead, even 
 granted I were a genius, which would be a 
 gross delusion —stop, I'll light my pipe, as 
 we've got the length of talking the matter 
 calmly over.' 
 
 He had recovered his composure and 
 cheerfulness the moment he had broken the 
 truth to his sister, but that did not make the 
 truth less exasperating to Fan. 
 
 ' Hans Sachs,' Oliver recommenced with easy 
 discursiveness, ' remained at once a minnesinger 
 and a cobbler, and I do not know that lie 
 either sang or cobbled the worse for it. You 
 will go and listen with satisfaction to an opera 
 of Wagner's, but not take the moral of the 
 text into account, you most illogical of Fans. 
 Hans Sachs lived in the blooming time of 
 Nuremberg, in the middle ages to be sure. 
 You may think the world has grown too old 
 for simplicity and a higher ambition than 
 rising above the class one was born in.'
 
 88 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 'What is a higher ambition ? ' interrupted 
 Fan, abruptly and incredulously. 
 
 ' To raise one's class and rise with it — much 
 the truer and surer, if it be the slower process,' 
 answered Oliver, without hesitation or circum- 
 locution, as announcing a thought out and 
 incontrovertible proposition. 'But if you think 
 Hans Sachs forms too remote a precedent, there 
 is Jasmin, the French barber and poet, quite in 
 our day. And I have heard of a very worthy 
 fellow who is also more than a poetaster, and 
 has yet worked out his " shifts ' like a man, 
 going down day by day with his pick and his 
 lamp into the blackness of darkness of a Scotch 
 coal mine. I tell you, child, it is the notion 
 that ability and education will not grace any 
 honest calling and station which is the essence 
 of snobbishness and vulgarity. It has tainted 
 every class in this country. It plays the very 
 devil with many a man who might otherwise 
 have been respected and respectable, a useful
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 89 
 
 citizen and worthy member of society. It 
 causes a certain order of talents and refined 
 tastes to prove a curse instead of a blessing to 
 a working man, even to a clerk, or a shop-lad. 
 I look upon it,' said Oliver with restrained 
 passion, 'as being at the bottom of much 
 of the unprincipled extravagance, fraudulent 
 speculation, and criminality and misery which 
 are eating out — not to say the prosperity — the 
 integrity of the nation.' 
 
 ; Then you would introduce Hindoo castes 
 or Russian serfdom into England ? ' Fan was a 
 little confused and incoherent in her examples, 
 which was not like her, for she was. clear- 
 headed as far so she saw, but she was driven 
 nearly beside herself. ' You would forbid any 
 man to exercise the gifts which God has given 
 him, and rise to their level in the social 
 scale.' 
 
 4 1 would do nothing of the kind. I would 
 have every man be a law to himself, and act
 
 90 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 up to his own standard — doing his best to raise 
 that standard. I don't quarrel with any 
 fellow for abandoning tailoring — say, and 
 adopting painting — always provided he has a 
 clear justification for the change by finding it 
 absolutely necessary for the expression of the 
 gift that is in him. I only say that it is done a 
 thousand times every day, when it is neither 
 justifiable nor necessary. It is high time some- 
 body made a stand against the disloyalty and 
 
 folly/ 
 
 'And you are the somebody who knows 
 
 better than every one else ! ' said Fan, sarcas- 
 tically. 
 
 There had always been great freedom of 
 opinion and speech between the brother and 
 sister in the middle of their warm mutual 
 regard. Oliver was not the man to behave 
 like a Turk to his womankind. Fan had not 
 been accustomed to be treated as an inane 
 dove, neither was she the woman to consent
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 91 
 
 readily to the treatment, whether from father, 
 brother, husband or son. 
 
 1 Oh, Oliver, how can you be so conceited and 
 self-willed?' she protested, indignantly. 'I 
 thought you were too clever — really, not to be 
 modest; I begin to think learning has made 
 you mad ! ' 
 
 Oliver shrugged his shoulders. 
 c An unlucky, unintentional quotation, my 
 dear, which, after all, I dare not presume to 
 take to myself. But I am not the only man 
 who holds views which, thank God, are gaining 
 ground in our day. Look here, Fan, I hope 
 this is not altogether a case of want of am- 
 bition, sloth, a taste for low life — if you care 
 to apply that term to the trading class to which 
 our father belonged. It is a point of con- 
 science which is beginning to be mooted among 
 men, whether or not they may be able to act 
 upon it as they ought. You think a great deal 
 of Oxford. If you were down there, you
 
 92 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 •would find some reading men, far before me in 
 scholarship, regretting that they had not learned 
 a trade and maintaining the dignity of labour in 
 its most primitive form.' 
 
 'Young men will take up any crochet for 
 the sake of contradiction,' said Fan, with a girl's 
 narrow dogmatism and ready scorn. 
 
 ' Still, if it is any comfort to you,' continued 
 Oliver, with a laugh not so genial as his laugh 
 was wont to be, ' there are far more cads and 
 fools in Oxford and the world than such would- 
 be reformers — idiotic as you may reckon them 
 in their own line. There are fellows who, like 
 Tito, would not only cut as neatly as possible 
 their greatest benefactors if they happened to 
 be grocers and linen-drapers, but would go 
 far bcyoud Tito in boasting of the creditable 
 performance. There are numbers of young 
 Englishmen prepared to turn their backs, on 
 the first opportunity, on the iron or the cotton 
 by which their fathers have played their parts,
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 93 
 
 according to their lights, like men, with sue- 
 cess (while the iron and the cotton trades were 
 never in greater need of fresh light and guidance), 
 all in order that young England in this direc- 
 tion may vegetate, run to seed, starve or steal, 
 as officers whom the piping times of peace 
 suit best, briefless barristers, or incompetent 
 clergymen.' 
 
 ' But you would not be a briefless barrister 
 or an incompetent clergyman,' said Fan. 
 
 Oliver shook his head. ' I cannot speak 
 in public, I can only hold forth to my own 
 cronies.' 
 
 This was true ; Oliver was not calculated to 
 shine as an orator ; his highly wrought nervous 
 awkwardness was entirely against him ; a certain 
 turgidness in the rush of his thoughts proved 
 even a more serious obstacle. 
 
 Occasionally, when lie was ' dead in earnest,' 
 as he said, he could surmount both defects, 
 lie would then speak tersely and clearly while
 
 94 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 he towered the head and shoulders above his 
 brethren, and flung out an arm with some- 
 thing like might and majesty. But, as a rule, 
 a singular shyness and self-consciousness came 
 over the young man in any general assemblage, 
 from a debating club upwards, and left him a 
 fettered and dumb giant. 
 
 ' I should make a bad advocate and a worse 
 judge,' said Oliver ; ' I have not the making of a 
 <rood lawyer in me — none of the sifting impar- 
 tiality, critical acumen, and hard-headed com- 
 mon sense which ought to dispense justice. 
 My own ideas, instead of authorities and pre- 
 cedents, would possess me. You have only to 
 put on a wig and gown in order to be a 
 sounder, safer judge yourself, though I can't 
 natter you, little woman, by pretending you 
 would prove another Portia.' 
 
 'But a clergyman is different,' said Fan, 
 
 faintly. 
 
 He shook the whole man, not his head
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 95 
 
 alone, in his impatience. ' Do you suppose I 
 should think myself warranted in becoming a 
 clergyman if I had not the highest motive and the 
 clearest bent ? ' he demanded, with more indig- 
 nant sharpness than he had yet spoken. 'I 
 would rather break stones on the road. I 
 might preserve my self-respect as an honest man 
 while I hammered at flints ; I should certainly 
 despise myself as a profane cheat and liar if I 
 offered spiritual stones for bread — all because 
 the Church was a gentleman's calling, and by 
 great good fortune, policy, energy, and care- 
 fully cultivated interest I might die a right 
 reverend bishop. I wonder though if a miller 
 and baker's son ever did die a bishop — out of 
 the colonies,' speculated Oliver with returning 
 good humour. 
 
 ' Oliver,' said Fan, solemnly, ' I cannot think 
 you are in earnest. I seem not able to believe 
 my ears. After father resigned your services, 
 after you have kept all your terms, taken more
 
 96 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 than one scholarship and gained this first class, 
 which everybody who knows anything about it 
 said you could do, and added that it would be 
 a great honour to you and the making of you in 
 any profession, to throw it all up in the end, to 
 act as if you had been keeping another man out 
 of his place, and wasting money the whole time ! 
 For you would have made as good — I should 
 say a far better miller,' (Fan could not bring 
 herself to say the word baker,) t if you had never 
 gone to Oxford, if you had left the Grammar 
 School when you were fourteen or fifteen at 
 the latest, and served your apprenticeship like 
 other lads who meant to be tradesmen, and 
 then father might have had your help in his 
 old age.' 
 
 1 There is something in that,' answered 
 Oliver in a low tone, with the pain which the 
 reminder roused in him perceptible in his voice. 
 1 I shall never cease to regret that I did not 
 see things as I do now from the first. I would
 
 MILLER AXD BAKER. 97 
 
 give a great deal even to have made up my 
 mind sooner — in time to tell father. But 
 nothing Avill convince me that he would have 
 opposed my decision.' 
 
 ' He might have said that you were spoilt 
 either for a miller or for anything else,' 
 retorted Fan. 
 
 'If he had done so, it would have been the 
 result of an old-fashioned prejudice ; and if I 
 had been able to show him that he was in the 
 wrong, he would have been the first to admit 
 it gladly,' said Oliver, keeping his temper. 
 1 Why, on earth, should a man not make as good 
 a miller — or coal-heaver for that matter — 
 because he knows a little Latin and Greek, and 
 can read Horace and Virgil, Sophocles and 
 Plato, in the original, if he chose, when his 
 work is done ? ' 
 
 Fan was getting desperate. No one save 
 herself could tell how grievous had been the 
 downfal of all the castles in the air which she 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 had been building since her earliest girlhood, 
 while she sat or stood, during the last half-hour, 
 in the familiar mill gallery, looking down, 
 as she had looked many a time before, on the 
 lovely home landscape, in the midsummer twi- 
 light, and only betraying her emotion by her 
 changing colour and tightly clasped hands. It 
 was all so utterly wrong-headed and delirious 
 in Oliver ; what one might have expected in a 
 French Communist, but what one could never 
 have imagined would find a fitting soil at 
 Oxford. 
 
 Fan had prepared herself for so different a 
 conclusion. She would have done anything;, 
 taken any pains and faced any ordeal for Oliver 
 — the Oliver of her dreams. Had he been 
 called to fill a throne, she would have toiled to 
 qualify herself to stand on its lowest step. She 
 was one of those women who have high enter- 
 prise in their composition. But if Oliver's 
 regalia were to consist, after all, of the mill-
 
 MILLER AXD BAKER. 90 
 
 wheel and the baker's oven, which had been 
 thorns in Fan's flesh when they were connected 
 with her father and grandfather, she had not 
 the enterprise to follow her brother in that 
 adventure. 
 
 ' Oh ! Oliver, if yon would only think it all 
 over again ! ' besought Fan, with tears, which 
 she had too much pride and endurance to 
 shed, dimming her bright dark eyes, as the 
 evening star came out above the Copley Grange 
 woods, and glimmered over the two. ' You 
 have been away from home, for the most part, 
 for years and years, ever since you were little 
 more than a boy. You have forgotten what 
 the conditions of a tradesman's life really are, 
 how hopelessly commonplace and vulgar — 
 worse in some respects than the life of a day 
 labourer. There may be some dignity in hard 
 toil and grinding poverty bravely borne — though 
 I should not like to be the one to bear them,' 
 said Fan, in parenthesis ; yet even as she spoke 
 
 n 2
 
 100 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 Oliver recognised that this worldly-minded little 
 sister of his was a woman who, in the circum- 
 stances she referred to, would have been found 
 capable of working herself to death and mak- 
 ing no sign, dying with the elements of true 
 tragedy and pathos in the self-respecting silence 
 and resignation of her humble end. ' But I 
 cannot see how there can be dignity in ordinary 
 buying and selling, in low chaffering and huxter- 
 in<?, and often cheating. ' 
 
 fc You are talking utter nonsense, Fan,' said 
 Oliver, half amused, half angry. ' There is 
 nothing dishonouring in trade, any more than 
 in a handicraft ; you might have known that. 
 There is dignity in any honest work which a 
 man does in the sweat of his brow. It is idle- 
 ness, however refined, which is clear degra- 
 dation and a blot on the social economy. We 
 have surely got a long way ahead of the early 
 rations that committed every useful art to 
 their slaves. When we go out now, with the
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 101 
 
 laudable aim of civilising savages, don't we first 
 qualify ourselves — those of us who have spent 
 our youth in the colleges — by graduating in 
 carpenters' and masons' work, cooking and 
 tailoring?' 
 
 ' That may be the way among savages,' said 
 Fan, with a nice distinction, ' but at home Ave 
 have not, in practice at least, gone so far 
 beyond the old theory.' 
 
 6 My dear Fan, have you never heard that 
 we are a nation of shopkeepers? How have 
 you managed to shut your ears ! In what cor- 
 ner have you been hiding? ' 
 
 ' Don't laugh,' said Fan, passionately ; ' I am 
 not able to bear it. And you must know that 
 when English people of the upper classes 
 own to be shopkeepers, it is on a grand scale 
 like the merchant princes of Venice.' 
 
 1 Or Tyre and Sidon,' suggested Oliver 
 * and we know what they came to ; but don't 
 starve your simile.'
 
 102 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 1 Trade, or anything on a grand scale,' 
 floundered Fan, 4 where the interests involved 
 extend far and wide and where the petty details 
 hardly reach the head trader, is very different 
 from a small business, with its meanness and 
 sordidness.' 
 
 ' Call nothing common and unclean which 
 human beings require,' muttered Oliver ; and 
 then he could not resist resuming his banter. 
 
 ' I have you now, Fan ; you go in for the 
 gulf between wholesale and retail, in the com- 
 parative offences of selling a bar of iron and a 
 tin-tack. What a humbug you are! ' 
 
 She disdained to defend herself from an 
 accusation which was particularly untrue and 
 objectionable to her. 
 
 4 1 am sensible that there is a tremendous 
 amount of humbug in society in the present 
 day. Doubtless it has existed in every genera- 
 tion, but in ours, I think, the crop is an unusu- 
 ally fine one,' commented Oliver, with provoking
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 103 
 
 coolness. He was swinging one leg with a 
 
 laziness that had an irritation in the very slow- 
 ness of the movement — monotonous as that of a 
 pendulum. Then he stopped the pendulum, 
 but caused it to quiver quickly, in a still 
 more trying manner, until Fan, under the 
 torture, w r as fain to cry out as if she had been 
 a vixen. 
 
 1 If you don't keep }-our leg still, this 
 moment, Oliver, I — I believe I shall leap down 
 into the w^ater. You ought to have been 
 whipped when you were a child till you learned 
 to stand and sit still.' 
 
 8 But you see I wasn't ; and I believe it 
 would have been next to an impossibility to 
 teach me,' said Oliver, stopping on the instant, 
 contritely. He would not willingly have hurt 
 a fly if he could have avoided it, though he 
 was compelled to wound Fan to the quick. 
 Happily for him, he could not sound the depths 
 of her prejudices, or altogether realise the pain
 
 104 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 he -was inflicting. But he struggled not to 
 chaff her any more, since she was so thin- 
 skinned and so much vexed by his determina- 
 tion. He reverted to general illustrations of 
 humbugs. ' I will say nothing of the curious 
 favour which is shown to brewers in these 
 days ; but though I don't go in for total absti- 
 nence, and can sing out for a glass of beer with 
 an easy conscience, it seems to me, in the name 
 of morality, the baker ought to be esteemed 
 the better tradesman of the two. Let me refer 
 further to the odd fact that a squireen, or duke, 
 or a prince, with an agricultural hobby may 
 farm his own land, grow corn, and fatten 
 beeves, without coming under the ban of a 
 spurious gentility — odious word, Fan ! But 
 society holds that when the same corn comes 
 to be ground into flour and kneaded into bread, 
 and the same cattle to be slaughtered and cut 
 into beef — very essential processes for the wel- 
 fare of the million, the men who take the pro-
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 105 
 
 cesses in hand and pledge themselves to bring 
 them to a fair issue, are justly to lose all social 
 status, and sink in the scale to depths of vul- 
 garity lower than the brutality of the most 
 stupid, ignorant, ragged, dirty lout ! (Of course 
 you understand I am pointing my moral by an 
 extreme instance of the working man.) Now, I 
 maintain that if we had — in addition to the great 
 farming landowner, and to that extraordinary 
 exception in position to other tradesmen, the 
 great brewer — the great baker, butcher ' 
 
 ' Fishmonger and greengrocer," chimed in 
 Fan, mockingly. 
 
 ' Why not ? ' Oliver accepted the addition 
 undauntedly. ' Men who should endow the 
 world with excellent bread, wholesome meat, 
 fresh fish — at reasonable prices, do you see? 
 for the credit of their trades and the good of 
 humanity — not merely that the baker and his 
 fellow-tradesmen might make haste to grow 
 rich and cut the shop, rear their sons for pro-
 
 106 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 fessions, and marry their daughters to profes- 
 sional men as the first step to a higher social 
 grade — they would deserve to be ranked as 
 public benefactors. I should not wonder,' 
 declared Oliver, breaking out into fun again, 
 ' though I had a statue erected to me one day 
 for leading the van in the beneficent movement. 
 Most likely I shan't be there to see. It won't 
 be, I dare say, till I'm " Old Constable " to a 
 third or fourth generation. But if the world 
 is only a little quicker in its appreciation and 
 gratitude than it is wont to be, as you are my 
 junior by a few years, it is just on the cards, if 
 you live to be ninety-nine, Fannikin, you may 
 behold the tribute. Won't it be glorious ! 
 Won't you be proud of me then ? ' 
 
 4 Oh don't,' groaned Fan. And Oliver re- 
 pented of an inveterate propensity to relieve 
 with a kind of licrht humour his gravest moods. 
 Then Fan rallied sufficiently to say, ' If the 
 statue be true to life, it will be like that of
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 107 
 
 Hora tius Codes, " halting on one knee," or doing 
 something equally uncouth and grotesque.' 
 
 ' Never mind that,' said Oliver, who had 
 little personal vanity, and who was glad, in the 
 innocence of his heart, to suppose Fan was not 
 so much hurt that she could not take him off in 
 her turn. But Fan was simply galled into irony. 
 She was sharpening her weapons in the little 
 silence which succeeded for a new assault on 
 her brother's position. 
 
 4 Any ordinary man may be such a tradesman 
 as you describe.' 
 
 'The ordinary man is long of coming, then/ 
 he interrupted her briskly. 
 
 She paid no heed to the interruption. 'An 
 extraordinary man only rises to his natural level 
 when he forsakes some common occupation for 
 another more in keeping with his powers. You 
 may as well pretend that God made all men 
 equal in every respect, and it is a sin and 
 wrong that there should be different classes in
 
 108 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 society, as hold that your talents and education 
 can be fitly applied to a trade.' 
 
 ' No. I say every new social movement 
 demands extraordinary men to be its pioneer 
 I confess I am rather ashamed to give myself 
 out as the extraordinary man in this case, but I 
 may serve till a better appear.' 
 
 ' It is not trade as it ought to be, it is trade 
 as it is, which you are bound to take into account 
 before you throw away all your hard-won ad- 
 vantages. High-flown notions may be all very 
 well in theory, but they are not for real life/ 
 said Fan, hardly sensible that she was airing a 
 terribly unchristian doctrine, only aware that 
 Oliver was shaking himself in vehement protest. 
 ' The tricks of trade are proverbial.' 
 
 'Disgracefully proverbial,' assented Oliver, 
 briefly. ' But if I thought they were universal 
 I should be lit to hang myself. Do you infer 
 that our father was not an honest man ? '
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 109 
 
 8 1 have never said a word against father's 
 honesty/ protested Fan, hotly. ' I believe he 
 was as honest as man could be. But he went 
 into trade for a livelihood, not to regenerate 
 society, as you are bold enough to propose. 
 You will ruin yourself in the first place, I 
 know.' 
 
 ' Then I don't know it, and what is more, I 
 don't mean to do it. That is the common cant ; 
 no thinker outside the details of his trade can 
 steer clear of the bankruptcy court. And we 
 have the disastrous fate of Burns and of other 
 thinkers — poets, politicians and what not, in 
 their respective businesses- — lugged in as a 
 timely warning. I tell you no man's thought 
 and culture, unless they were attended by some 
 radical mental defect or fatal self-indulgence, 
 ever disqualified him from managing his worldly 
 affairs. The reverse has been proved over and 
 over again ; but it does not suit the common-
 
 110 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 place world, and you as its present exponent, to 
 believe it. However, I am no poet or astrono- 
 mer or geologist. Unlike the Laird of Cock pen, 
 my head is not taken up with the affairs of the 
 State. Even my scholarship is of modest di- 
 mensions. Moreover, I shall make it my careful 
 endeavour not to ruin myself, were it only to 
 give the he to my self-complacent friends who 
 go in for business on what they call business 
 principles, forsooth ! — every man for himself and 
 the most money soonest made — as if there were 
 not sounder as well as higher laws of political 
 economy than some of the political economists 
 themselves ever touched. Ihit if I do ruin 
 myself in an attempt to regenerate society, as 
 you, Fan, term — rather grandiloquently — my 
 simple resolution to stick to the old shop and 
 do the best I can with it, can I ruin myself in 
 a worthier cause ? ' 
 
 Then, in contradiction to his disclaimer of
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. Ill 
 
 anything remarkable in his purpose, he began to 
 repeat with repressed enthusiasm : — 
 
 1 Can a man die better 
 Than facing fearful odds ? ' 
 
 She would not let him finish the verse. She 
 broke in with the old fruitless adjuration, ' Oh, 
 Oliver, think again '
 
 112 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A LAST APPEAL. 
 
 6 Think twice over what you are going to do, 
 urged Fan, for the last time. ' I tell you that 
 you look back on the past softened by distance, 
 and I suppose surrounded by a sort of halo of 
 youthful associations and kindly recollections. 
 I have never been removed from Friarton Mill 
 for such a length of time as to forget all its ills 
 and only remember its advantages. How will 
 you like to hang on in the mill and, worse, in 
 the bakehouse and shop — to be bearded by 
 your own men, who will be the first to recognise 
 that you have not been bred to their trade and 
 to make good use of your ignorance — to be
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 113 
 
 worsted by trades' unions — for I conclude bakers 
 will go out " on strike," if they have not yet done 
 so — like other work people ? How will you 
 stand being patronised by the farmers and 
 corn-dealers, and having to submit to the whims 
 and insolence of your customers ? ' 
 
 ' Upon my word, I do not see why I should 
 stand either, if I do my duty. And I would 
 rather hang on in a mill or a bake-shop than in 
 city chambers draped round with cobwebs and 
 filled with empty tin boxes bearing lying titles, 
 or in a vestry hall where I had no business to 
 be, or in a barrack vard where I should never 
 learn the goose step, or in stables or kennels/ 
 
 1 It is my duty to speak,' said Fan, solemnl}-, 
 developing a fine talent for lecturing ; ' since you 
 have been so long away, you have forgotten 
 or you do not rightly understand a great deal 
 that will happen if you persist in your folly. 
 All the better class of people in Friarton — 
 the Fremantles and Wrights and that set, who 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 114 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 took us up because they expected you to become 
 one of themselves and to do them credit — will 
 drop us again ; and who can blame them ? when 
 they discover that you have no ambition — that 
 you have a taste for low company — so it will seem 
 to them. We shall of course fall back among the 
 Polleys and the Dadds and the rest of the 
 tradespeople like ourselves,' said Fan, bitterly. 
 ' We choose their ranks deliberately as ours, and 
 how can we expect that the members of another 
 rank will continue to stoop to us, or consent, for 
 our sake, to anything so disagreeable as beiug 
 habitually mixed up with people far beneath 
 them in birth and breeding ? Are you not 
 able to recall how dreadful a tea at the Dadds, 
 or a supper at the Polleys, used to be ? How, 
 when you were a boy and knew little else, you 
 hated it and shirked it, when father would, let 
 you ? ' 
 
 Oliver winced a little, but recovered himself 
 gallantly. 'I was an intolerable young fool —
 
 MILLER AND BAXER. 115 
 
 giving myself airs, as old Dadd once told me to 
 my face. He is a shrewd intelligent old fellow 
 in his linendrapery line. One may easily 
 listen to the experience of a far inferior man.' 
 
 ' Have you grown fonder of his coarse familiar 
 jokes and the all-pervading smell of his gin 
 and water ? ' asked Fan, with scornful incredu- 
 lity. ' If so, perhaps you can also better appre- 
 ciate young Dadd's icwellery and Mrs. Dadd's 
 mock " umbleness," like Uriah Heep's, to hide 
 her slyness and spitefulneLS. And you may 
 have come to value, at their proper worth, the 
 Polley girls' giggles and shams, and their mother's 
 loud self-assertion and sheer impertinence. No 
 doubt you admire their combined illiterateness 
 and absorption in the pettiest gossip, their poor 
 aping of the faults, or else their rude defiance of 
 the merits, of their social superiors. Don't you 
 know that the Dadd and Policy idea of a life 
 w r orth leading, is to make money in order to 
 eat, drink, and lie in bed, to keep sporting dogs, 
 
 l 2
 
 116 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 attend low races and offer and accept bets, to 
 have parties, " beaux," and flirtations to the 
 girls' hearts' content ? Are greediness, laziness, 
 bumptiousness and folly — gaudy, tawdry pre- 
 tence, and coarse gorgeousness, such admirable 
 qualities in men and women and their surround- 
 ings ? I declare the Dadds and Polleys are the 
 most irreverent undutiful people I know. Oh ! 
 Oliver, it is too horrible that the end of your 
 cleverness and college training should be to 
 condemn yourself, and me with you, to close 
 contact and hopeless association with such peo- 
 ple — when we have no relief to expect save from 
 our own deterioration. We shall deteriorate 
 and grow like our neighbours speedily, I dare- 
 say, and then we may not feel that we were 
 ever fit for something better. But how we — 
 one of us, at least — must sufFer in the process of 
 deterioration before it is complete ! ' 
 
 Fan was perfectly sincere, however absurd, 
 in her horror and distress. She had a natural
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 117 
 
 abhorrence of the vulgar, gross self-indulgence 
 which she had described, and an intense 
 yearning for its opposite, the true refinement of 
 simplicity, self-restraint, and self-devotion, with 
 its outward expression in the subtle charm of 
 pure and graceful harmony. There was this 
 to be said for Fan's ambition, that it was not 
 composed of coarse materials. It was neither 
 sensual nor sordid. Fan would have been very 
 tolerably content to be a poor lady among 
 ladies and gentlemen. She would have made 
 the very best of her gentle poverty, because 
 she fully comprehended the self-respect in- 
 volved in self-denial, the essential honour 
 included in showing regard for the rights and 
 claims of her neighbours, and in energy, 
 diligence, and usefulness fitly exercised. Fan 
 had the making of a real lady — rich or poor — 
 in her. And if she were not speaking under a 
 delusion, it was a pity that her vocation should 
 be spoilt.
 
 118 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 But Oliver dealt her a stern rebuke. 
 
 4 This is too bad,' he said, indignantly, 
 taking the pipe from his mouth. ' There is 
 only one grain of truth in your tirade against 
 the class in which you were born — its members 
 are guilty of aping the faults of a higher class. 
 As you have yourself said so, you cannot be 
 ignorant that greed, and its opposite — senseless 
 extravagance, laziness, levity, and worse, are 
 safe to be found — just masked by a thin veneer 
 of polish — in still greater abundance among 
 dukes and duchesses — or say at once kings and 
 queens, than among tradespeople. And you 
 have said nothing of the peculiar virtues of 
 tradespeople. You spoke of Mrs. Policy - 
 self-assertion. I grant it is offensive — but surely 
 you have been told what that woman has done 
 for her family. When her husband proved an 
 incapable ne'er-uo-wcll, who if left to himself 
 would have none straight to the do<*s, and 
 reduced his children to the workhouse, did not
 
 MILLER AXD BAKER. 119 
 
 his " missus " come to the front and stand by 
 her master like a brick and a Trojan ? She 
 kept him from both his and her undoing. She 
 maintained Polley's grocery business by her 
 industry, and made it flourish by her mother- 
 wit, till now her husband is no worse than 
 a tolerably respectable nonentity, and her 
 children have been reared in independence and 
 comfort. No blame will rest on her if they are 
 not able to hold their own in the world. I 
 have often heard, and so have you, my father 
 and old Floyd praise that woman for her 
 works. As for Mrs. Dadd, I don't say that her 
 meekness is the real thing, but she is not without 
 true motherliness and kindness of heart. Have 
 you forgotten how she left her own child 
 and came out and stayed here to nurse you 
 through scarlatina because she doubted Sally 
 Pope's experience and ability to cope with the 
 disease ? For shame ! Fan, a short memory is 
 unpardonable here.*
 
 120 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 ' I have not forgotten,' said Fan, pettishly ; 
 ' if I had, I should not have kept up the amount 
 of intercourse with the Dadds I have consented 
 to keep.' 
 
 'No doubt it is a great reward for her 
 trouble and risk that you should call for her — 
 behaving civilly in the performance of your 
 duty, I take it for granted — once in three 
 months,' said Oliver, still in a fume. ' I am 
 not of your opinion. But though I have not 
 the same faith in the light of my countenance, 
 and the edification implied in the bestowal of 
 my company for a spare half hour, still I 
 have my own views on the subject. But upon 
 my honour, Fan, I hesitate at this moment 
 under a sense of my unworthiness, and a con- 
 ception of these respectable people's positive 
 virtues, to presume to weigh their comparative 
 defects and measure them against any supposed 
 superiority of intellect and training on my 
 part. Are brains and culture — of which one
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 121 
 
 hears so much from pedants and puppies — to 
 be named in the same breath with honest men 
 and women's fidelity to their sense of right ? 
 But if the questionable superiority has an ex- 
 istence, am I not called upon by every dictate 
 of true public spirit and good feeling to show 
 that superiority by striving to do what I have 
 already spoken of — raise the tone of my class, 
 and lead it to higher aims and purer pleasures? 
 Is not that a nobler ambition than to content 
 myself with rising above my class — abandoning 
 it to grovel in materialism, if not to wallow in 
 the mire ? Do you know that Kingsley said 
 teachers and preachers to the rich and the 
 poor were not wanting, but where was he who 
 would go on a mission to the lower middle 
 and small trading; classes, and reclaim them 
 from their special form of animalism and 
 licence, " their irreverence and undutifulness," 
 as you put it. Do you believe the Bible, Fan, 
 or do you hold that such injunctions as to 
 
 J
 
 122 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 preserve old landmarks and not to forget our 
 own and our fathers friends, are out-of-date 
 precepts — simply fit for Orientals ? ' 
 
 'You are clever, Oliver,' said Fan, coldly. 
 ' I cannot pretend to vie with you in quota- 
 tions misapplied.' 
 
 'As the devil is great in texts — no, you 
 don't mean that,' said Oliver, trying to conjure 
 back a friendly spirit into the dispute. He had 
 smoked his pipe and was knocking out its ashes. 
 There was silence for a time, and then he 
 pointed out that the moon had risen un- 
 observed while they were speaking. It was 
 flooding the landscape with a light which, 
 though it comes so often, never gives a familiar 
 impression, but always produces an effect 
 wholly removed from that of ordinary light, 
 causing both heaven and earth to be changed 
 for us, and to come out, in their every aspect, 
 a more solemn and grander sky, a sadder and
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 123 
 
 fairer world, than those we see by the beams of 
 the sun. 
 
 Under the rays of the moon, the mid- 
 summer green of the Copley Grange trees 
 had grown dusky. They were massed to- 
 gether and cast deep shadows over the turf, 
 while the waters of the Brook flashed here and 
 there like silver by contrast. In the sky over- 
 head the Pleiades were asking who should bind 
 their sweet influence? Orion the mighty 
 hunter was abroad. The Pole-star was glitter- 
 ing with his special effulgence. 
 
 ' How small those lamps up yonder, whose 
 oil has never failed since the creation, make a 
 poor beggar and skirmisher of a day feel ! ' said 
 Oliver, suddenly. ' One would not say, either, 
 that they disdain the humanity they have given 
 light to throughout the centuries. I am not sure 
 whether Friarton Mill is not jollier by moon- 
 light than by daylight. If all you said were
 
 124 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 true, Fan, what a compensation the beauty of 
 this place might still prove ! I defy you to say 
 that in one respect, and that of all save the 
 first importance, the lines have not fallen to us 
 in pleasant places.' 
 
 But she would not be appeased. Xature 
 was not to her at any time what it was to him ; 
 at this moment the perfection of the scene 
 before her, hurt her afresh, like a taunt added 
 to a blow. ' You will make me hate this 
 place,' she cried reproachfully ; ' you will make 
 me wish I had never seen this house which 
 was father's house, where I have lived the most 
 of my life.' 
 
 He was sorry for her pain, but he was also 
 disappointed and wounded at her utter want of 
 sympathy with him. ' You have one resource 
 left you,' he said, with some hardness, which 
 had not been there before, stealing into his 
 tone. ' You can go away and leave me and 
 the mill. My father made sufficient provision
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 125 
 
 for } t ou, to enable you to act as you like, and I 
 will do all in my power ' 
 
 She interrupted him, turning upon him 
 with a passionate protest. ' Do you think I 
 could do it? Do you think I would leave you 
 alone to bear the penalty, though it may be of 
 your own incurring ? What do you take me 
 for ? You do not know me, Oliver.' 
 
 4 That may very well be, since I do not 
 believe your know yourself,' said Oliver, with 
 a shrug. ' But I am obliged to you, all the 
 same, for your magnanimity.' He was really 
 touched by her womanly love and constancy, 
 though he had been too much provoked to 
 show it. 
 
 c There is one question I am entitled to ask 
 you,' said Fan, more calmly. ' You admit you 
 did not always mean to sink into a tradesman. 
 I know you had very different ideas when you 
 went first to Oxford. What changed you ? ' 
 
 He hesitated and did not speak for a
 
 126 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 moment. He did not deny her right to put 
 the question, but lie did not know how to 
 answer it. In many things which related to 
 his words and acts, he was by disposition a 
 frank and open-hearted man, but in proportion 
 to his general frankness were his particular 
 reserves. He had sacred secrets which had to 
 do with convictions, feelings, and principles. 
 He could no more turn his nature inside out to 
 his dearest friend where these were concerned 
 than he could consciously practise self-decep- 
 tion and social hypocrisy. He was even shy 
 with himself in dealing with the deep things of 
 his spirit. Still he owed some explanation to 
 Fan, who had been the happy confidant of the 
 early dreams which had passed away like the 
 morning mist, and who now stood there in 
 such estrangement from him. 
 
 ' Oh ! all sorts of arguments came in and 
 did their work,' he said at last, a little vaguely. 
 \ Some familiarity with learning bred the usual
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 127 
 
 contempt, I dare say. I was only her valet, and 
 so she ceased to be a heroine to me. I have 
 grown a good deal older and wiser — let ns hope 
 to begin with — and — well there was one affair 
 which made a considerable impression upon me 
 at the time that I can speak of to you. There 
 are plenty of tradesmen's sons who find their 
 way to Oxford, but there was just one other 
 baker's son who got there witli me. He or his 
 friends for him made a grand mistake in some- 
 how procuring his admission, under false 
 colours possibly, into a notably aristocratic 
 college. I don't suppose his people had any 
 very honourable aim in sending him to college 
 at all, at least he himself was a vain, weak 
 fellow who thought chiefly of acquiring as- 
 sociates — whom he called friends, in a rank of 
 life far above his own. I have no doubt he 
 intended to cut the baking trade entirely when 
 he left Oxford, and that he hoped by means of 
 his fellow-Oxonians to hoist himself into polite
 
 128 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 society. For that end lie was willing to make 
 himself generally obliging and useful, poor 
 beggar, to his temporary companions. He 
 would help and back them in their money 
 transactions, cater for their entertainment, and 
 bear more than his share of the brunt of their 
 scrapes. 
 
 4 That was to be the great business of his 
 college life — with the securing of a high con- 
 nection for its end — not a very heroic end, eh, 
 Fan? But, to do him justice, he had no more 
 natural turn for study in any shape — classics, 
 history, philosophy, or philology, than nineteen 
 out of twenty of his chosen patrons had de- 
 veloped in their more favourable circumstances, 
 or than had been shown by the whole of his 
 father's journeymen bakers with their adverse 
 surroundings. But, there was not any more 
 harm in him than being the wrong man in the 
 wrong place, which is not a very uncommon or 
 heinous transgression, though being that, he was
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 129 
 
 a mean little flunkey. But the fault was not 
 altogether his, and he was good-natured and soft- 
 hearted ; though he was idle, I never heard 
 he was vicious. They said afterwards that 
 he was liked in his native town, and had been 
 a good son and brother. 
 
 4 The fact of his fathers disgraceful trade 
 had been kept in strict concealment, and did 
 not come out for some time. But when it did, 
 the enormity of the offence — though one would 
 say that most people are personally indebted to 
 bakers who mind their business — together with 
 the low deceit of the concealment, proved far 
 too much for any poor popularity Tom Neaves 
 had attained. The fellows he was amongst 
 could not get over the " rank impudence " of his 
 intrusion into their college, yet I should not 
 wonder though they imagined they admired 
 Thackeray — " Less of a cad, you know, than 
 Dickens " — and knew something about George 
 Osborne and " Figs." They judged Neaves de- 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 served to be punished, and they sat upon him 
 to give him Ids deserts, and above all to get rid 
 of him, as the officers of a crack regiment 
 sometimes agree to compel a wretched sub- 
 altern who is not of their set, and so is not 
 fit for their mess, to exchange or sell out. Of 
 course in both cases the affair is so managed as 
 not to attract the attention or force the inter- 
 ference either of a superior officer or a. dean, 
 and only what are considered legitimate weapons 
 are used against the common enemy. Mind, 
 Fan, I do not pretend that Neaves was without 
 blame ; and I am perfectly aware that the 
 young fellows who led the attack against him, 
 in their very contempt, did it more in thought- 
 lessness than in malice. A few of them dropped 
 his acquaintance summarily, as they were per- 
 fectly at liberty to do. But the greater number 
 settled to make him their butt till he should 
 endure it no longer. They assailed him with 
 a perpetual storm of allusions to his origin and
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 131 
 
 practical jokes on his father's trade. They in- 
 quired gravely his opinion on dinner rolls. They 
 smuggled loaves into his gown. They show- 
 ered as much Hour upon him from the windows 
 of their rooms when he crossed the qua! as 
 ever was scattered from a costermonger's cart 
 on a Derby day, or a Eoman balcony during 
 the carnival. No doubt the wit of these gen- 
 tlemen was not very high-bred or unique in 
 its expression ; but what was lacking in bril- 
 liance was made up in energy — the energy of a 
 pack of boys, of undergraduates — in teasing 
 and tormenting their victim. Of course, if 
 Neaves had possessed sense and spirit he would 
 not have minded a straw, or he would have 
 returned the a^ressors scorn for scorn — if he 
 had not risen to the height of repaying them 
 good for evil — and possibly brought them to 
 a more rational frame of mind. But unfortu- 
 nately sense and spirit were just the qualities 
 in which poor Neaves was lamentably deficient. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 lie had already proved himself, as I have told 
 you, a silly, weak fellow, mortally ashamed of 
 liis father's honest calling ; therefore his assail- 
 ants hit him on the tenderest point, and had 
 him at their mercy. He struggled against the 
 persecution for some time, tried to behave as if 
 he did not see it, then blustered a little, then 
 knocked under. To think such gnat-bites 
 could drive a fellow with a soul in him beside 
 himself ! They did ; therefore his body was 
 found iloating in the Isis one fine morning, 
 down among the boats, not far from a place 
 where he had once, after his boat had bumped 
 another boat, given a sort of pic-nic, and 
 boasted that the greatest c nobs ' of his college 
 — the wild younger son of a duke and an out- 
 at-elbowa young viscount — had been his sap- 
 porters. There was some confusion in the 
 wording of the telegram which broke the 
 catastrophe to old Neaves. The family clung 
 to the idea that though an accident had hap-
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 133 
 
 pened, and their Tom was the sufferer, he 
 might still be alive. So the mother hurried 
 to the spot along with the father. 
 
 ' I chanced to see them after they had been 
 told the worst and were starting for home 
 again to warn the rest of their children of what 
 was coming. The old man did not show what 
 
 he felt, but the mother 1 tell you, Fan, every 
 
 jury in the kingdom would, with justice, have 
 exonerated the perpetrators of the mischief from 
 even so much guilt as manslaughter, though 
 one of them — I need not say he was not a ring- 
 leader — took the misfortune so much to heart 
 that he had to be removed from Oxford to save 
 
 his reason and to this day when that woman's 
 
 face comes into my mind, I think as I did then, 
 I would rather have been the wretched simple- 
 ton in his coffin than those men in the flush of 
 their youth and strength and whatever goodly 
 birthright they claimed besides. By Heavens, 
 Fan,' protested Oliver, in the passion which had
 
 134 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 been gathering dining his story, ' what these 
 fellows did was the farthest removed from the 
 chivalrous courtesy which was once held to con- 
 stitute gentle bearing, it was the grossest ex- 
 ample of caddish behaviour I ever came across.' 
 
 Fan was scared by the ghastly ludicrousness 
 and grievous pathos of the story, and by the 
 degree to which Oliver was moved in telling it. 
 She had never seen him in his grief for the loss 
 of their father betray so much emotion as he 
 did now, when he grew pale in the moonlight 
 with the violence of his anger, and clenched his 
 teeth in the height of his reprobation and 
 disgust. 4 It was very cruel, very ungenerous/ 
 said Fan, with a kind of shivering recoil. She 
 crept close to her brother and clasped his arm 
 with her two hands, clinging, to him. c They 
 never treated you so, dear? ' she asked with a 
 gasp, as if seeking to reassure herself. 
 
 ' Not they,' he said with an awkward laugh, 
 half ashamed of his excitement. ' Mv college
 
 MILLER AXD BAKER. 135 
 
 was not quite so exclusive, and I trust I was 
 made of sterner stuff. If the men had chaffed 
 me with a miff-wheel or a rolling-pin, I should 
 have replied, Yes, these were my arms, and I 
 did not see that something might not be said 
 for them as well as for a pair of wild men of 
 the woods, a Moor's head, a pirate's ship, or an 
 assasshi's dagger. The gist of the matter is that 
 if I lost some of my ideals at Oxford I found 
 others to replace them. Let us be thankful. 
 Come along, Fan ; the dew has done falling, 
 indeed, but I am keeping you out far too late 
 with only that rag of a handkerchief over your 
 head.'
 
 130 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LOUISA AND CATHERINE IIILLIARD. 
 
 'Your settling down here as a tradesman, 
 Oliver, will be a nice story for Mrs. Hiliiard 
 and Catherine,' said Fan Constable, tartly, over 
 the breakfast-table next morning. For Fan 
 was by no means permanently converted, how- 
 ever touched for the moment, by the last 
 evening's conversation. 
 
 Oliver shook himself with some vigour, but 
 the gesture was so common with him as not 
 necessarily to imply any special depth of feeling 
 stirred by the observation ; however, his colour 
 rose as he spoke in answer. 
 
 ' What will Mrs. Hiliiard and Catherine
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 137 
 
 make of it ? what can it be to them ? At the 
 same time Mrs. Hilliard puts little weight on 
 social distinctions ; you must do her the justice 
 to grant that, Fan,' he said, looking straight 
 across the table to his sister, and speaking with 
 a degree of emphasis which implied that, in his 
 opinion, Fan was not in the habit of judging 
 righteous judgment where Mrs. Hilliard was 
 concerned. ' As for Catherine,' he added, after 
 a moment's pause, c I imagine she is too much 
 in the clouds, as usual, to take much notice of 
 what happens on the common earth/ He said 
 the words with an attempt at carelessness, but 
 in reality he spoke with an effort, stiffly. 
 
 ' Oh, it may suit Louisa Hilliard to profess 
 that she is indifferent to public opinion and in- 
 dependent of it, that she is a privileged, irre- 
 sponsible person, in short. But you are greatly 
 mistaken if you think you will escape her gibing 
 tongue and impertinent laughter. And you 
 will find to your cost that when the matter is
 
 138 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 of the least importance she will take care to 
 comply with the world's standard/ 
 
 4 1 don't wish to stand between any genial 
 soul and her jest,' said Oliver ; ' and I am sure, 
 Fan, you need not quarrel with respect for 
 social standards.' 
 
 4 I don't quarrel with it,' said Fan, decidedly. 
 4 I think that whatever the social standards of 
 the past may have been, social standards in our 
 day ought in the main to be deferred to by all 
 sensible people. What I object to, naturally, is 
 that you should insist on running counter to 
 them in order to indulge in a wild dream.' 
 
 ' I plead guilty,' said Oliver. 
 
 4 As for Catherine Ililliard,' Fan went on, 
 4 she is not too much " in the clouds," as you 
 call it, to prevent her coming down among 
 ordinary people and saying very stinging sar- 
 castic things. Louisa is only too well content 
 with herself and her belongings ; but I think 
 Catherine Hilliard is a discontented girl.'
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 139 
 
 4 The level of "a low content," muttered 
 Oliver, gratifying his father's old, half-blind, 
 half-deaf English terrier ' Ned ' with a sardine. 
 
 Fan did not catch the quotation, or notice 
 the typical act: she was leaping to a conclu- 
 sion. 'Catherine Hilliard is so dissatisfied 
 with herself and everything around her, 
 that I fancy she will learn to welcome any 
 change of circumstances, until she may get the 
 length of selling herself and her feelings some 
 day. Then, no doubt, after the bargain is 
 completed, she will turn round and decide that 
 this gain also is not worth a tithe of what she 
 has paid for it.' 
 
 ' You have no right to speak so, Fan,' said 
 Oliver angrily. 4 Of course, I don't pretend to 
 guess how Catherine Hilliard may dispose of 
 herself,' he went on more calmly ; 4 but she has 
 always appeared to me a kind of nineteenth 
 century vestal virgin, a " Christian priestess of 
 Nature " and such letters and art as have come
 
 140 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 in her way. That is not the sort of creature 
 who sells herself.' 
 
 ' I beg your pardon, Oliver.' Fan contra- 
 dicted her brother with mingled dignity and 
 obstinacy. 
 
 ' And I beg your pardon, Fan.' Oliver 
 perpetrated with considerable success a mimicry 
 of his sister's manner. 
 
 1 There,' he said quickly, ' as you are 
 always tempted to be unfair to the Hilliards, 
 we had better let the subject drop.' 
 
 Fan did not protest against the charge of 
 unfairness, or insist on prolonging the discus- 
 sion. Perhaps her conscience pricked her a 
 little. She was perfectly sensible in the truth- 
 fulness of her nature that Louisa Hilliard was 
 her bete noire. Fan used to say to herself 
 without disguise, ' I can't bear Louisa Hilliard/ 
 
 This was one of the instances of natural 
 antipathy and comparatively causeless dislike, 
 which, like the opposite examples of instinctive
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 141 
 
 partiality, and hardly warranted attachment, 
 were apt to hold sway over Fan Constable's 
 ardent, concentrated temperament. Hers was 
 not an unjust or undisciplined character, while 
 it was loyal to the core; but it was full of 
 'likes and dislikes. 5 There was nothing lym- 
 phatic or volatile about Fan, to her great loss 
 of ease and tranquillity. If she had been put 
 under an examination as to the provocation she 
 had received from Mrs. Hilliard, who was Fan's 
 remote kinswoman and early patroness, Fan 
 could not have given any save the pettiest 
 reasons of which she herself would have been 
 the first to feel ashamed. Yet her asperity 
 where this woman was concerned amounted to 
 rancour. Sometimes the sentiment in her own 
 bosom struck Fan as unchristian, and being 
 very sincere in her Christianity, she sought to 
 qualify her enmity by solemnly assuring herself 
 of what was the truth — that she would not 
 injure Louisa Hilliard for the world. It was
 
 142 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 only incidentally that Catherine Hilliard came 
 in for her share of the dislike which Fan had 
 to Catherine's cousin. The two younger women 
 possessed nothing in common, but neither had 
 they any sharp points of antagonism. If it 
 had not been for Fan Constable's extraordi- 
 nary aversion to Mrs. Hilliard, Fan would 
 have viewed Catherine Hilliard with simple 
 indifference. 
 
 Mrs. Hilliard and her cousin kept house 
 together, chiefly upon Mrs. Hilliard's income, 
 at the 'Meadows,' which was at once the 
 largest, and, though it sounds a contradiction, 
 the cosiest, certainly the prettiest, of the villas 
 which had sprung up on the outskirts of Friar- 
 ton. The 'Meadows,' in fact, was more of a 
 small country house than a villa. It entitled 
 its occupant, unless she were a very objection- 
 able person otherwise, to revolve in the first of 
 the social circles — which, like the sap-rings in 
 the trunk of a tree, divided the townspeople
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 143 
 
 into various grades of enclosure. Nay, the 
 fc Meadows ' entitled its owner to hover on the 
 verge, which she crossed not infrequently, of 
 the county families. 
 
 For Mrs. Hilliard was only objectionable in 
 possessing a carelessness of mind — a rather pro- 
 nounced Bohemianism. She was regardless of 
 who took her up or who let her down, which 
 had an effect the reverse of what some people 
 might have expected. As she was also a lively 
 agreeable woman, superficially refined, a well- 
 endowed, comely widow of thirty-five years of 
 age, who relished her freedom too keenly to 
 have any thought of marrying again, but who 
 kept a pleasant house and welcomed her friends 
 to it, she was lifted clean above the ebb and 
 flow of social fickleness ; she was landed in 
 established popularity with carte blanche to do 
 very much as she pleased, and fill up her 
 visiting-list just as she chose. 
 
 In fact, Mrs. Hilliard's house was what
 
 144 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 the vicarage often is in country society, a sort 
 of neutral ground and meeting place for diffe- 
 rent classes — or degrees of classes, in the com- 
 munity — not that its mistress would descend so 
 far as to receive ordinary tradespeople and 
 fraternise with them, Fan now reflected, 
 gloomily. Yet Mrs. Hiiliard had opened her 
 doors to the brother and sister since they were 
 a mere boy and girl, and had in her turn 
 visited at Friarton Mill. And she had not come 
 exactly as the Fremantles and Wrights, the 
 dignitaries of the Grammar School, had come, 
 because the mill family, so far as it had to do 
 with Oliver, might be regarded as in a transi- 
 tion state, and on the point of taking flight 
 into higher regions ; but because Mrs. Hiiliard, 
 though a well-born, well-married woman, the 
 daughter of a rural dean and the widow of 
 a commodore, was really distantly related to 
 the Constables through their mother. Mrs. 
 Constable, as Fan never forgot, had been the
 
 MILLER AXD BAKER. 145 
 
 daughter of a clergyman, not a dissenting 
 minister but a regular parson of the Church of 
 England. But, after all, there are clergymen 
 and clergymen even of the Church of England. 
 The poor curate who had been Mrs. Constable's 
 father had lived and died in very different 
 circumstances from those of the comfortably 
 situated rural dean to whom Mrs. Hilliard had 
 owed allegiance. The curate, to begin with, 
 had stooped and married the daughter of a 
 yeoman, who on his part had not enjoyed any 
 of the plain plenty apt to be associated with a 
 great farmhouse. Accordingly, the curate's 
 brood of children had been brought up in a 
 spare as^well as homely fashion, until they had 
 been sent out into the world to earn their 
 living, and make their own way, as clerks and 
 nursery Governesses ; one of those governesses, 
 with her limited education and still more 
 limited earnings — not to be compared to a 
 good cook's wages — was found not unwilling 
 
 c; C to 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 to exchange her anxious dependence and 
 drudgery for the serene independence and 
 importance, in her own sphere, of the mistress 
 of Friarton Mill. Strange to say, the fact of the 
 slight tie of blood between the two women 
 failed to prevent Mrs. Hilliard from settling at 
 Friarton when the Meadows offered itself to 
 her and her man of business — at once as a good 
 investment for her spare money and a suitable 
 house which she could make a home. 
 
 Stranger still to relate, Mrs. Hilliard was too 
 secure of her position, and too defiant of 
 censure, to ignore for a moment the thread 
 of relationship between herself and the 
 Constables of Friarton Mill. On the contrary, 
 she proclaimed it openly with evident cold 
 blood whenever she had occasion to do so, 
 compelling confidence and respect in her 
 hearers. For if Mrs. Hilliard could afford to 
 make light of, nay, to sport, her far-away cousin- 
 ship to the family of a provincial miller and
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 147 
 
 baker, her acquaintances might rest on the con- 
 viction that she had substantial claims on their 
 regard in much closer alliance with the families 
 in canons' houses in cathedral closes, in govern- 
 ment houses abroad, in pleasant little houses 
 near Hyde Park or at Kensington. But in 
 reality the eccentricity belonged rather to the 
 idiosyncrasy of the woman than to the remote- 
 ness of the relationship which she elected to 
 count with the Constables. 
 
 Mrs. Hilliard had been ready to hold out 
 her hand to the Constable young people, which 
 was one of the offences Fan, though she could 
 not dispense with the hand, had not been able 
 to forgive. This was not pure perversity and 
 ingratitude in Fan Constable. It was the result of 
 the observation that Mrs. Hilliard laughed, with- 
 out taking the trouble to conceal it, at Fan's 
 serious pretensions, and that the older woman was 
 as little, as the younger was much, in earnest. 
 
 The . Meadows was a wide white house, 
 
 L 2
 
 148 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 cheerful in its whiteness, and, at the same time, 
 amply shaded and sheltered by old and luxu- 
 riant shrubberies, of which the Portugal laurels, 
 Irish yews and hollies were giants of their kind, 
 while the lilacs, Guelder roses, and syringas 
 offered, in their season, pyramids, piles, and 
 thickets of flowers. The public rooms were all 
 on the ground floor ; and, in the case of the 
 drawing-room, the long French windows, which 
 faced the south, opened to the lawn with its 
 clumps of rhododendrons and brakes of thorns, 
 and its glimpse in mid distance, through an 
 archway of roses, of the flower-garden. 
 
 The drawing-room at the Meadows was the 
 sunniest, most cheerful room in a house the 
 great distinction of which was resolute, some- 
 times slightly overpowering, social sunshine and 
 cheerfulness. Mrs. Billiard used to call it an 
 1 Omnium Gatherum,' a flagrant instance of 
 eclecticism where rooms were concerned. Its 
 furniture, and the occupations she engaged in
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 149 
 
 there, did not date beyond her own reign at 
 the Meadows, and so would have been pro- 
 nounced worthless by connoisseurs. But, as 
 Mrs. Hilliard maintained, she had lived long 
 enough to have seen several styles of decoration 
 and ladies' work, and her drawing-room proved 
 with what catholicity of spirit she had ' gone 
 in ' for each in succession. The only drawback 
 was that she could not make up her mind to be 
 entirely off with the old love in order to be on 
 with the new. Thus she sacrificed the creat 
 aim of the last exposition of high art — unity, to 
 her unprincipled softness of heart and lack of 
 sternness of purpose. She retained the cold 
 whiteness and pompous glitter of the upper part 
 of her walls, and the undue warmth of colour- 
 ing and floweriness of her carpets — attempting 
 to combine them with dirty orange dados and 
 sage-green portieres, just as she kept the faded 
 gorgcousness of her Berlin woolwork in stripes 
 of bold embroidery divided by bands of imperial
 
 150 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 purple and emerald-green velvet, or in great 
 groups of Queen of Sheba flowers like the ex- 
 uberant flower-pieces of Flemish painters, in- 
 troduced into close contact with the dim, 
 delicate conventionalities and studiously faint, 
 long-drawn-out effects of nineteenth-century, 
 art needlework. It was a highly objectionable 
 compromise from an artistic point of view, but 
 somehow it was not only saved from absolute 
 f rightfulness, to a Philistine it had a charm of 
 its own, because of its little bit of mellowed, 
 blended life — such asonemav occasionally meet 
 with, on a grand scale, in a pile of building 
 which began by being a feudal castle, and went 
 on to be an old English manor-house, then 
 progressed into a Georgian mansion, ending by 
 proving the many-sided home of a race. So 
 time with lingering fingers had toned down 
 and tempered the robust gaudtnessof the abused 
 Berlin woolwork till it too had acquired some- 
 thing of the exquisitely soft harmonies of ancient
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 151 
 
 tapestry. That was Catherine Hilliard's opinion, 
 and she had a fine eye for colour. The chairs 
 and tables, the books, the pictures and the 
 china in the room, were all about as incon- 
 gruous, and yet all in a manner represented 
 some phase and echo of human life, and had 
 come to fit into each other. 
 
 So much could hardly be said with regard 
 to Catherine Hilliard and her surroundings, as 
 she stood listlessly looking out of one of the 
 long windows on the lengthening shadows 
 falling across the lilac flowers of the rhododen- 
 drons, and waiting for her cousin coming in to 
 afternoon tea. It might be because Catherine 
 belonged to all time that she did not belong 
 particularly to that room — in which, however, the 
 window where she stood with its round table, 
 heap of books, letter-case and blotting-book, 
 work-basket, and Nankin jar holding a bunch of 
 purple and pink and white pea-blossoms, consti- 
 tuted Catherine's sanctum and private properties.
 
 152 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 Catherine Hilliard was a young orphan 
 cousin of Louisa Hilliard's, who, when she left 
 school with a bare competence, had been in- 
 vited by the mistress of the Meadows to share 
 her establishment. Catherine had accepted the 
 invitation on the stipulation that, in proportion 
 to her more slender means, she should pay her 
 share of the joint housekeeping. ■ Catherine is 
 such a dragon of pride for a young girl,' Mrs. 
 Hilliard explained to anyone who had a right 
 to be made acquainted with the details of the 
 arrangement, ' that I dared not propose to her 
 to come and live with me and let me keep 
 house for both. Yet she micjlit have the sense 
 to guess that her company is a boon to me, 
 though she has little sympathy with my potter- 
 ing common] >lace ways, and lives in an intel- 
 lectual world of her own. It is my single regret 
 with regard to Catherine that she is a bit of a 
 blue stocking.' But though Mrs. Hilliard pro- 
 fessed and half persuaded herself to believe the
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 15 
 
 Q 
 
 contrary, in reality she neither objected to 
 Catherine's contribution to the general expenses 
 nor to the different line she took in society. 
 Mrs. Hilliard's hand was not so open that it had 
 not its seasons and occasions of closing, and she 
 did not care to run the risk, slight though it 
 might be, of a rival in her special field. 
 
 Altogether the arrangement, which had con- 
 tinued from the time that Catherine Hilliard 
 was eighteen, up to the present date when she 
 was in her twenty-third year, had answered 
 admirably. Mrs. Hilliard was the reverse of 
 exacting, and she was even forbearing and in- 
 dulgent where Catherine's dissimilar tastes and 
 habits were concerned. On Catherine's side she 
 was not so ignorant and abstracted in her want 
 of knowledge of human nature and absorption 
 in her own pursuits, as to be unaware how 
 much colder and more forlorn a place the world 
 would have proved to her, if Mrs. Hilliard had 
 forgotten their cousinship and had not extended
 
 154: OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 to the girl an older woman's friendly pro- 
 tection, and given her a home with a member 
 of her kindred. Catherine cherished in silence 
 and reserve sentiments of gratitude and affec- 
 tion for her cousin Louisa, and was a good deal 
 more under her influence than could easily have 
 been supposed. But there was a hitch — what 
 miners call 'a fault' — between Catherine and 
 ordinary humanity, the consequences of which 
 were so plain that Fan Constable, who was not 
 in the other girl's confidence, could read them 
 though she could not trace them to their source. 
 Without near ties, without clear, positive duties 
 — apart from the obligation to keep the ten com- 
 mandments and lead what she understood of a 
 Christian life, Catherine Hilliard was thrown 
 back and in upon herself, which, unless as a 
 discipline to teach her how insufficient she was 
 for any achievement she really valued, seemed 
 about the worst experience she could have en- 
 countered. She was like a plant withdrawn
 
 MILLER AXD BAKER. 155 
 
 from the wholesome, common, out-of-door in- 
 fluences of sun, rain, wind, and a touch of frost, 
 while the plant is at the same time subjected in 
 one part of its cellular tissue to the strain of 
 over-stimulus and over-cultivation. Though 
 Catherine lived in a house full of lively move- 
 ment, with many comers and goers, though she 
 was on excellent terms with the house's mistress 
 and its circle or circles, the girl remained always 
 like an unfamiliar visitor in what served her for 
 a home. She was onlv in, not of, its circles. 
 Catherine's was largely an inner world of fancy 
 and feeling ; its scenes furnished by the vivid re- 
 presentations which she drew in her mind, of 
 places and incidents met with in her books ; its 
 characters, ideal personages, ghosts and shades — 
 goodly ghosts and heroic shades, no doubt, but 
 destitute of the substantiality and warmth, and 
 what is salutary even in the provoking contra- 
 dictions, the piteous failures, the tough warfare of 
 flesh and blood. There was a certain bloodless-
 
 156 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 ncss and fantasticalness about Catherine's world, 
 amidst much that was noble and sweet in it. 
 She had an aching consciousness of a hollow 
 emptiness about it, and not of a gaping void 
 alone, but of a harsh discord between it and 
 the actual world. She felt herself netting more 
 and more fastidious and captious and — she 
 feared — horribly selfish. She moped a good 
 deal, as well as mused. She dreaded instinct- 
 ively she knew not what, as the result of her 
 star-gazing and hero-worship. She was con- 
 scious she shrank from the common work-a-day 
 world and from the vulvar and mean interests 
 — often, of ordinary people with the common 
 business of life on their hands. But she did 
 not know in the least how to give up her 
 habits, or reconcile herself to society as she 
 found it. She was helpless in the bondage she 
 had made for herself — yet she was frequently 
 more weary and disgusted with herself than she 
 could possibly be witli any other person. But
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 157 
 
 Catherine had one great resource against mor- 
 bidness, though she repaired to it as to other 
 occupations, either listlessly, or with a fitfulness 
 in her temporary eagerness, resorting to it with 
 no distinct comprehension of w T hat a safeguard 
 it was to her, from the consequences of the 
 continual exercise of those faculties which were 
 already over- wrought. 
 
 Catherine was exceedingly fond of animals, 
 and she happened to be free to express her 
 fondness, since she was not merely the mistress 
 of half-a-dozen pets of her own, she was the 
 sovereign protector of the whole animal kingdom 
 as it existed at the Meadows. She was like- 
 wise the head-gardener on the spot. For Mrs. 
 Hilliard had nimbly seized the opportunity of a 
 floricultural tyrant's throwing up his good situa- 
 tion, in a fit of pique, to get rid of her hired op- 
 pressor permanently. She had then vested in 
 Catherine supreme authority over a junior 
 gardener and a boy who were well broken in
 
 158 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 to obedience. The only obligation which Mrs. 
 Hilliard had imposed on her cousin was that 
 she should not indulge her predilection for 
 Shakespearian flowers in the beds, and un- 
 trimmed luxuriance in the shrubbery, to the 
 extent of banishing every choice pelargonium 
 and perfectly quilled dahlia, which had formerly 
 crowned Mrs. Hilliard with honour at flower- 
 shows ; neither should Catherine be guilty of 
 corrupting her subordinates to the degree of 
 reducing the grounds to the picturesquely dis- 
 orderly level of the gardens of a French or Italian 
 country house, so ruining the established re- 
 putation of the Meadows for the trimness which 
 is the English gardeners delight. 
 
 Catherine, always overwhelmed as she was, 
 not with bracing work, but with a dreary 
 surplus of vacant time on her hands, in spite of 
 her reading, was fortunately capable of revelling, 
 in her desultory fashion, in this double resource. 
 She would leave Dante in the saddest region of
 
 MILLER AXD BAKER. 150 
 
 the Inferno, the Jungfrau when the Black 
 Knight had her at last, Mary Barton pursuing 
 the outward-bound ship, Janet in the agony of 
 her repentance, to take refuge in her own 
 section of the living world. She would play 
 for half-an-hour with Pepper and Crab or the 
 youngest kitten. She would watch the eight 
 rooks whose big, black-coated presence always 
 seemed to Catherine to lend a solid dignity to 
 the fry of small birds, just as the rooks' deep 
 cawing supplied a solemn diapason to the 
 lighter music of the orchestra in the shrubbery 
 on a bright morning in spring, or a quiet evening 
 in early summer. Catherine stoutly maintained 
 the innocence of the rooks against the respectful 
 representations of the modest under-gardener, 
 that the birds did not confine their bill of fare 
 to worms and the wide genus grub, as she 
 was fain to assert. And after all, the alleged 
 depredations committed by the rooks, were as 
 nothing to the frightful accusations brought
 
 160 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 against a pair of demure sinners of cushat 
 doves, which were like the apple of Catherine's 
 eye, for whose condescension in coming of 
 their own sweet will and building a nest in 
 an old Scotch fir, and their affability in in- 
 dulging in soft cooin^s, she could never be 
 sufficiently grateful. Catherine scouted the 
 idea of replacing the wild pigeons by a couple 
 of their tame kindred, which should be housed 
 in a neat little pigeon-house, submit to be fed 
 with grain and crumbs from feasts, or fly far 
 a-field for their meals instead of proceeding 
 with the marauding instincts of the most in- 
 corrigible of thieves, and alas ! in spite of their 
 sleek, iridescent plumage, and the tender sen- 
 timent associated with them, of the greediest 
 feeders belonging to the feathered tribes, to 
 devastate whole rows of newly-sown peas and 
 6 breaks ' of young cauliflowers. 
 
 What did Catherine care for peas and 
 cauliflowers compared to her cushat doves?
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 161 
 
 But Mrs. Hilliard, though she found some 
 food for laughter in the doves' exploits and 
 Catherine's dismay, was not so indifferent to 
 the wreck of her vegetables. Catherine was 
 very much obliged to Oliver Constable for 
 telling her, though it was in a measure another 
 disillusion in the way the information was 
 put, that wood-pigeons were the most arrant 
 cowards in addition to being the most* disgrace- 
 ful thieves, for the most transparent sham — 
 the least life-like scarecrow — sufficed to hold 
 the robbers at bay. 
 
 Catherine was as well acquainted with 
 every bird's nest within her bounds as were 
 the Friarton boys, whom she could not keep 
 out of the shrubbery in the bird-nesting season, 
 and whom she detested with an illogical detes- 
 tation — to say the least, enough to show that 
 she had never had a brother. She would 
 suddenly start out on these boys from a little 
 wilderness of green branches, and assail them 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 with a torrent of passionate reproach. The 
 boys would stare blankly at the apparition they 
 had aroused, but any unwonted bashfulness, 
 if exoited at all, would speedily give way to a 
 sense of the utter disproportion between cause 
 and effect. The result would be an ironical 
 titter or guffaw (for the Friarton boys were by 
 no means models of good manners), and a 
 noisy, careless retreat to be followed by a 
 return rendered doubly certain by Catherine's 
 injudicious challenge. 
 
 Catherine retreated too, covered with swift 
 mortification for her extravagant anger. But 
 it was difficult to be patient with those young 
 savages, who could no more be barred out than 
 the waves of the sea could be held back, who 
 would make short work in one holiday after- 
 noon of all those exquisite little homes of moss 
 and leaves, leaving the poor, fond, helpless 
 architects fluttering in despair round their ruined 
 dwellings and pillaged treasures of blue, green,
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 163 
 
 black and red spotted, and freckled eggs, or, 
 more precious still, downy, yellow-beaked, 
 tottering, gaping fledglings. The nests were 
 perfectly beautiful and sacred to Catherine, and 
 she took great pleasure in visiting them all 
 round every morning, with elaborate pre- 
 cautions not to disturb family arrangements or 
 trouble heads of houses in the performance of 
 their duties. 
 
 Catherine was almost as happy and much 
 less liable to worry, among her lilies, of which 
 she cultivated an infinite variety ; her trailing 
 love-lies-bleeding, like a warrior's plumes heavy 
 and drooping with the red stains of battle ; the 
 golden shields, with the dark discs and the stiff 
 grenadier stalks, of her sunflowers ; the pinked 
 perfection and spicy breath of her clove carna- 
 tions. She would hang over each of them, and 
 touch them with a lingering, fondling touch, as 
 if they were sentient creatures, and could wel- 
 come and respond to a friendly caress. She 
 
 M 2
 
 164 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 hated to shorten their brief blossoming time ; 
 she would never gather them with lavish waste- 
 fulness. She liked to have them near her at 
 all times, and so woidd take a tribute from 
 their abundance to ' busk ' her person and the 
 Meadows drawing-room, but she never did it 
 unsparingly and recklessly. 
 
 Catherine Hilliard was of the middle size, 
 but looked taller than she was from the slen- 
 derness of her figure. Her hah' was of that 
 dubious colour which enemies called red, friends 
 auburn, and gushing admirers golden. In 
 reality it was each tint as the light fell on its 
 simple braids and twists. Her complexion was 
 fair and pale — too waxen, in spite of her bird- 
 herding and gardening, for perfect health. 
 Her nose, mouth, and chin were well and 
 softly moulded. But the results of her tempe- 
 rament and circumstances were visible in her 
 personal appearance. There was a languor 
 which had no vital purpose to conquer it, evi
 
 MILLER AJST) BAKER. 165 
 
 dent in her air, that threatened to drain away 
 the last remnant of what ought to have been 
 the healthy hope and joyousness of her years. 
 Her mouth had a sensitive, plaintive droop. 
 The expression of her eyes varied continually 
 from hesitating dreaminess to spasmodic enthu- 
 siasm, from short-lived enthusiasm to intolerant 
 scorn, from quick scorn to morbid depression. 
 The beauty of Catherine Hilliard's face, as it 
 struck strangers, dwelt principally in the dark 
 blue of her eyes. Withal, she was by no means 
 strictly beautiful, only endowed with a peculiar 
 charm for those on whom the charm worked 
 at all. She had a fancy for gowns of thin 
 material, in their season, like summer clouds 
 floating round or clinging to her, according to 
 the atmosphere, in the dry heat of noon, or in 
 the slight dankness of the dewpoint. But she 
 preferred the colour of her gowns to be softly 
 dark like the clouds after sunset, thus instinctively 
 rather than deliberately setting off* the fair
 
 166 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 paleness of her complexion. She kept her 
 cousin Louisa marvelling where Catherine could 
 find so" many misty purples, heather browns, 
 and cool slate colours, as well as naval blues, of a 
 wire-woven texture. Catherine wore a gauzy 
 gown of a deep plum-colour at this moment.
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 167 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 HOW MRS. HILLIARD AND CATHERINE JUDGED 
 THE LAST SAINT GEORGE OF FRIARTON. 
 
 At last Mrs. Hilliard came briskly into the 
 room still wearing her hat. She could not, 
 although she had tried, have walked otherwise 
 than briskly ; and if she had been a duchess, 
 her buxom and florid good looks, a little over- 
 blown, would still have recalled a dairy-maid. 
 But as Mrs. Hilliard was perfectly aware of the 
 association, and, instead of attempting to 
 smother it by all lawful and unlawful means, 
 faced it courageously and acknowledged it 
 openly, she succeeded in surmounting it ; by 
 not pretending to be what she was not, she re-
 
 168 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 mained herself in all essentials. She looked 
 what she had always been — a lady in spite of 
 excessive plumpness, a decided inclination to 
 redness, and an exuberant, lasting elasticity and 
 quickness of carriage and step — the reverse of 
 Catherine's listlessness — which would have been 
 more becoming in early youth, and which had 
 small connection with the sobermindedness, 
 not to say the stateliness and dignity, of mature 
 years. 
 
 The only sensitiveness which Mrs. Hilliard 
 betrayed as to her personal style, was that 
 while she was by implication resigned to, nay, 
 reasonably consoled for, the death of her hus- 
 band, whom she had married after the shortest 
 of wooings, and of whom she had not seen 
 much during their brief married life, she con- 
 tinued faithful to her widow's black, though it 
 was twelve years since she had been a wife. 
 At the same time she could not get over her 
 cousin's eccentricity of taste when Catherine
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 169 
 
 could have fluttered so fitly, in every respect, 
 in white or in the palest of pinks, blues, or 
 primroses. For a girl to be addicted to sobriety 
 in anything, before her time, was incomprehen- 
 sible to Louisa Hilliard, save in the light of 
 affectation, if not hypocrisy, on the girl's part. 
 But though Mrs. Hilliard did not believe much 
 in most people — young or old, she had still 
 faith in Catherine's odd childish simplicity. 
 
 ' Have I kept you long waiting, my dear ? ' 
 asked Mrs. Hilliard as she subsided, buoyantly 
 still, into her own low chair, and, untying 
 her hat, tilted it unceremoniously, for greater 
 coolness, on the back of her profuse brown hair. 
 Her action made conspicuous, what was a 
 marked feature in her round face, the great 
 expanse of white forehead — round like the face 
 itself, and big enough to have been, so far as 
 size was concerned, the forehead of a sage, but 
 so flat and smooth that, gazing on it, one felt 
 tempted to doubt the fact of which there was
 
 170 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 no question, that Mrs. Hilliard represented a 
 woman of rather more than ordinary intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 * Not very long,' answered Catherine, with 
 her slow, absent-minded mode of speech, 
 dawdling as she spoke across the floor ; ' and 
 though you had, you know it would not have 
 signified,' she added indifferently. 
 
 ' It always signifies if one interferes witli 
 another person's comfort/ said Mrs. Hilliard, 
 lightly ; c only you are too young to understand 
 the value of that jewel of an English word, 
 and I am bringing my excuse in my afternoon's 
 budget, Catherine.' 
 
 In their familiar household intercourse Mrs. 
 Hilliard never abbreviated her cousin's name, 
 or played affectionate or mischievous tricks 
 with it. This was not because Mrs. Hilliard 
 was in the least like either of those dignitaries 
 Fan Constable or the Vicar of Wakefield, who 
 loved to be particular, who might choose to
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 171 
 
 revenge themselves nobly on the base liberties- 
 taken, doubtless, with each in turn, when they 
 were addressed as ' Fan' and ' Dr. Prim.' 
 
 Mrs. Hilliard asserted that Catherine was 
 ' Catherine ' like her namesake of Sienna, 
 therefore the elder woman could not presume 
 to call the younger ; Kate ' or ' Kitty,' though 
 Mrs. Hilliard herself had never been anything 
 else to her intimates than ' Loo ' or c Looey,' 
 unless c Tom ' sometimes in the days of her 
 youth. 
 
 Mrs. Hilliard was in the habit of referring 
 unblushingly, and with a merry defiance of the 
 contempt excited in the superior, highly culti- 
 vated people who proclaimed themselves far 
 above gossip, to her diligence in collecting, and 
 keenness in enjoying, the Friarton news of the 
 day. Catherine did not often appreciate, in 
 themselves, the promiscuous heaps of news cast 
 down at her feet, for her to pick and choose 
 from without much trouble on her part.
 
 172 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 But she did set wistful store on the merry 
 heart of the gatherer and scatterer, and counted 
 herself a dull girl by contrast, Not that 
 Catherine was a dull young woman to speak 
 with, she was rather pungent in a quiet way, as 
 Pan Constable had described her. Yet with all 
 her pungency she had a singleheartedness and 
 magnanimity of character, a speedy inclination 
 to own herself in the wrong, after speaking her 
 mind, which generally forced her inferiors to 
 respect as well as to pity her, and to receive 
 her under their protection from the encroach- 
 ments of others, even while they were taking 
 advantage of her themselves. 
 
 ' You won't enquire what great event has 
 happened,' said Mrs. Hilliard, hardly waiting 
 till the servant had left the room. 
 
 ' 1 shall hear it presently,' said Catherine 
 composedly. 
 
 4 Then you shall have it au nature!, without 
 any stuffing or garnishing, to punish a great
 
 MILLER AKD BAKER. 173 
 
 lazybones of a girl who will not so much as 
 get up a little curiosity to serve as a relish for 
 my tit-bit.' 
 
 I Too many cooks spoil the kale,' said 
 Catherine. ' I should only waste my small culi- 
 nary talents by setting them up against yours.' 
 
 I I am not going to punish myself, in order 
 to keep you in suspense any longer. I flatter 
 myself, though you are a mouldy book-worm, 
 you feel an agony of suspense, whatever you 
 may pretend. As for myself, I am itching to 
 create a sensation. Oliver Constable is going 
 in for the mill and bakehouse — what do you 
 think of that ? What an anti-climax to Fan's 
 solemn gentility ! ' 
 
 ' Going in for the mill and bakehouse ? " 
 repeated Catherine, vaguely. 
 
 'My dear Catherine, you are getting as 
 pedantically precise in your English, and as 
 stupid, as the rest of your clever people,' pro- 
 tested Mrs. Hilliard, with lively impatience.
 
 174 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 1 Don't tell me going in for a thing is slang. 
 Very soon, if you don't take care, you will be 
 mistaken for a school-mistress. You will be as 
 incapable as a senior wrangler of speaking the 
 language of ordinary life, or of taking in a 
 simple statement. Oliver Constable has come 
 home from Oxford to be a miller and baker, 
 as old Peter Constable was before him — do you 
 understand that ? ' 
 
 1 Yes,' said Catherine, with a faint smile. 
 ' What is your objection, Louisa? ' 
 
 1 Mine ? I have none in the world. He 
 may be the bellman or the lamplighter — by-the- 
 by, these are two far more romantic occupa- 
 tions than what he has chosen — for me. I am 
 father obliged to him for making the unex- 
 pected happen, because, though it always hap- 
 pens, according to Lord Beaconsfield, still, 
 somehow, it sets us talking, and talking — or 
 shall I call it gabbling — is my vocation.'
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 175 
 
 ' Don't you find it tiresome ? ' suggested 
 Catherine, with odd naivete. 
 
 4 To myself or other people ? ' enquired Mrs. 
 Hilliard, unmoved save for the twinkle in her 
 eyes. ' I can vouch it does not tire me;' and 
 she used her plump fingers French fashion to 
 help herself to another lump of sugar. 
 
 6 1 suppose Oliver Constable cares more for 
 making money than for winning success in 
 what is called a learned profession, and securing 
 a social position ; that is all it comes to,' said 
 Catherine, with a little sigh at the smallness of 
 the sacrifice and the result altogether. c I am 
 not sure that he may not be right, from his 
 point of view, unless he were to "go in " 
 (Louisa ?) for great scholarship or for travelling 
 to the North or the South Pole. You see there 
 are no Eldorados or Asgards left for men to 
 believe in, and go in search of now. Oliver 
 Constable is not a genius, to write an immortal
 
 176 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 book, or paint a picture which will never be 
 forgotten. I do not know that there is any- 
 thing so very much better for him to do than 
 honestly add pound to pound, and take his 
 worldly pleasure by counting up his gains at 
 the year's end.' 
 
 'My love, what a Mammon-worshipping 
 speech from you, of all people ! ' 
 
 ' But we don't seem to be able to keep 
 from worshipping Mammon,' alleged Catherine, 
 wearily, ' though we say and perhaps mean that 
 we are worshipping another god ; and I am not 
 at all clear that Mrs. Grundy is a more re- 
 spectable deity than Mammon.' 
 
 1 You can't accuse me of paying homage at 
 her shrine. But are you not sorry for sister 
 Fan ? What was her ultimatum for Oliver ? 
 That he should become Lord Chancellor or 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, while she should 
 be Jock the Laird's sister ? What a descent, 
 to be condemned to remain the sister, as she
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 177 
 
 was the daughter, of a well-to-do miller and 
 baker ! ' 
 
 ' No, I am not sorry,' said Catherine, with 
 more animation than she had yet shown, for 
 there was a spice of short-lived indignation in 
 the tone. ' If she could have no higher am- 
 bition for her brother than that he should be 
 a barrister or a rector — you know his rising 
 to be so much as a judge or a dean was 
 hardly to be thought of — I have not a spark of 
 pity to spare for Fan Constable's disappoint- 
 ment.' 
 
 ' You have very little pity to spare for any- 
 body out of a book, it appears to me,' said Mrs. 
 Hilliard, with cheerful absence of concern. 
 'Your little foible is that you are extremely 
 hard-hearted. I am not — at least nobody can 
 refuse to give me the credit of good nature. I 
 am really sorry for Fan in the collapse of the 
 dream of her life, if she would only believe me, 
 and if she would not make herself so ridiculous 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 by her fixed determination to be a lady. Of 
 course the determination defeats itself. She is 
 not and never will be a lady — conventionally, 
 though she is well enough in her irregular 
 way, if she would relax her resolution — 
 which she will not do so that I must laugh or 
 die,' finished Mrs. Hilliard, not looking like 
 dying. 
 
 6 I had quite a different idea of Oliver Con- 
 stable, however,' said Catherine, returning 
 voluntarily to the main thread of the conver- 
 sation, but not speaking as if this or any other 
 baffled idea mattered much. ' I never thought 
 him mercenary ' 
 
 ' Wait a little,' interrupted Mrs. Hilliard, 
 with unquenched vivacity ; ' my hero is not 
 mercenary. He is the most disinterested, un- 
 selfish of mortals, though he is a " sair saunt ' 
 to Fan. He has come back among us as the 
 self-appointed champion of the millers and ad- 
 vocate of the bakers. He is to be the defender
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 170 
 
 of the tradespeople — the last version of St. 
 George in Friartoru' 
 
 ' But who is harming the millers, or what 
 need have the bakers of an advocate ? ' asked 
 Catherine, in a puzzled tone. ' I thought the 
 tradespeople here were particularly prosperous 
 — much more so than any other class. I am 
 sure they are not deficient in a sense of their 
 own merits and in a capacity for bringing 
 them into the foreground.' 
 
 ' I agree with you entirely. But I suppose 
 their prosperity is their bane in one sense, and 
 that our taking them at their own word goes to 
 prove that we are a pair of would-be, bloated 
 aristocrats. But it is a fact that I never go 
 into Polley's or Dadd's shop without having 
 a distinct perception that Mrs. Polley and old 
 and young Dadd are thinking to themselves, 
 " You need not look down on us ; we are every 
 bit as good as you are. We have as early 
 spring chickens and lamb on our tables as you 
 
 N 2
 
 180 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 have on yours. We could buy you out any 
 day" (and I dare say they could, if the 
 Meadows were to sell). " We know our place, 
 so far as being civil in return for your custom ; 
 but don't try to turn up your nose at us " — as if 
 my nose would do anything save turn up — to 
 her Majesty the Queen on her throne in the 
 House of Lords. Catherine, you are aware of 
 its infirmity ? ' exclaimed Mrs. Hilliard, paren- 
 thetically, tip-tilting the refractory member still 
 farther with her middle finger in the most 
 comical manner. ' "Don't go to think of tramp- 
 ling us under your feet," which, as Sairey 
 Gamp used to say, " Betsy Prig will take her 
 Bible oath " is the last exercise she would seek 
 to take for the mere pleasure of the thing.' 
 
 Catherine was fain to laugh. 4 When I begged 
 Mrs. Polley to keep her errand-boy away from 
 the shrubbery — away from the birds' nests,' the 
 girl chimed in — ' Mrs. Polley was quite rude. 
 " You must really look after him yourself, Miss,"
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 1 SI 
 
 she told me sharply ; ' he is rny servant here,, 
 but he is not answerable to me when he is out 
 of the shop. Excuse me, but it ain't any call of 
 mine to look after Mrs. Hilliard's place. Let 
 them idle fellows of gardeners as are in her pay 
 see to that, I have enough to do with my 
 business. You ladies would be the first to com- 
 plain and leave the shop if it were neglected." ' 
 * There is something in that,' said Mrs. 
 Hilliard, candidly. ' Indeed I have had 
 thoughts of giving up Polley's, because, accord- 
 ing to cook, Mrs. Polley will not amend the 
 error of her ways in the line of capers and 
 cloves. I have meditated making an experi- 
 ment in the new shop near the railway station, 
 only I feared that, on the whole, I should be 
 worse served there. For Mrs. Polley, to give 
 the woman her due, knows her business, keeps 
 a good article as a rule, and despises to ask an 
 absurd price for it. As for her " Britons never 
 shall be slaves " tone, it borders on the aggres-
 
 182 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 sive, but then it is the reverse of servility and 
 it is the eeho of a highly esteemed patriotic 
 song. I imagine Oliver Constable will call it 
 the expression of a fine independent spirit.' 
 
 'But what does Oliver Constable mean?' 
 repeated Catherine, looking as she was apt to do 
 sometimes, hopelessly mystified in spite of her 
 cleverness. 
 
 4 He means to regenerate the lower middle 
 classes — to make all the members ladies and 
 gentlemen in spite of themselves. Young Dadd 
 must learn Greek, and carry Plato, instead of 
 " Verdant Green" and " Mrs. Brown at Margate," 
 in his coat-pocket, and dip into ancient philo- 
 sophy in the intervals of handling his shears 
 or his yard measure, of cutting off a yard of 
 lace, and calculating how much cloth is required 
 for the present fashion in flounces. Mrs. Polley 
 and her girls will attend evening classes for the 
 higher education of women, and trip you and 
 me up with an opinion on the tertiary forma-
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 183 
 
 tion, or the recently discovered satellite of Nep- 
 tune, when our small minds are full of bloom 
 raisins and Carolina rice.' 
 
 ' But I thought you said he was to identify 
 himself with the millers and bakers ? ' 
 
 c That goes without saying, you little goose. 
 Charity begins at home.' 
 
 ' But they will still be millers and bakers,' 
 hammered Catherine. 
 
 ' I should hope so. Let him make them 
 what he likes, I trust he intends to leave us 
 our flour and bread, else we shall be in a bad 
 way. For, though the railway might bring us 
 a supply from a distance, still we should miss 
 a little, our breakfast and dinner rolls. Even 
 these would be too heavy a price to pay for a 
 young fanatic's radicalism — is that the proper 
 name to call it, Catherine ? ' 
 
 1 I cannot tell,' said Catherine, slowly, ' but 
 surely the thing itself is wasted on millers and 
 bakers and common tradespeople.'
 
 184 OLIVEK CONSTABLE, 
 
 The girl was not hard-hearted, as she had 
 been called. Any social arrogance which she 
 expressed was more an acquired trick of thought 
 and speech than a calm persuasion. She was 
 not a fool, yet she nourished a vague impression 
 that it might be a Christian, patriotic duty to 
 do something for the outcast and forlorn — that 
 a troop of soldiers or a crew ot sailors called for 
 care from their leaders ; while she held the 
 notion that millers and bakers, with tradespeople 
 in general, even though they were convicted of 
 gross self-indulgence, and that coarse material- 
 ism which is the deadly enemy of a higher life 
 — of all spirituality, might very well be left 
 to take care of themselves. 
 
 ' Will Oliver Constable's mission have any 
 success ? ' Catherine speculated, with mild, idle 
 curiosity. ' Will the great vulgar consent to be 
 refined ? ' 
 
 ' I should think not,' said Mrs. Hilliard, 
 decidedly. ' If I were one of them, I should hate
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 185 
 
 to be poked up and enlightened. After all, I 
 have a strong suspicion I am one of them, with 
 just an outer coating of polish, the result of 
 circumstances,' Mrs. Hilliard announced im- 
 penitently, with a keen perception of the fun 
 of taking guilt to herself. 
 
 It was Jike Catherine not to contradict the 
 assertion beyond a certain point. 
 
 ' You don't speak fine language like one of 
 the Miss Polleys, or run away, after the fashion 
 of some of the others, when they have come 
 into the shop in their morning deshabille, and 
 are scared by the entrance of a customer 
 belonging to the upper ranks. You are not 
 slovenly, smart, and splendid by turns. You 
 don't giggle at every word and think it witty to 
 be rude to men, clenching your rudeness with an 
 emphatic " There ! ' as I have heard the Miss 
 Polleys do when I have gone to their shop with 
 some of Eeddock's commissions on market-day. 
 You don't spend your evenings sauntering up and
 
 186 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 down the street, or paying perpetual visits to 
 your cronies.' 
 
 4 But I am a very prosaic, commonplace 
 person for all that,' said Mrs. Billiard, demurely. 
 * You are sensible I have no sympathy with 
 high heroics or " high faluting " of any kind — 
 my nature is pitched in too low a key. The 
 rest is accident. You forget that I am twice as 
 old as the youngest Miss Polley — almost old 
 enough to be her mother — not to speak of the 
 cares I have gone through. I have no occasion 
 to walk out after dinner, or shop-shutting, as it 
 may be, since the whole day is mine, and you 
 must admit I make good use of the hours after 
 luncheon. I believe I am the best visitor in 
 Friarton. Oliver Constable ought to include me 
 in his mission, or get up a private one for my 
 special benefit. It is not fair to my needs, it is 
 impertinent to the tradespeople, to omit me in 
 his benevolent efforts. But perhaps he would 
 prefer to reform you, withdrawing you from
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 187 
 
 your books and converting you into a social 
 animal with a due regard to your neighbour's 
 welfare ; ' as she spoke, Mrs. Hilliard glanced 
 quickly at Catherine, but the glance fell without 
 effect like blank shot. 
 
 ' I don't think he will trouble with either of 
 us,' said Catherine, composedly. ' We are not 
 in trade, we should be wide of his mark. Will 
 he continue to come here? I mean, will he 
 drop you from his visiting list, or will you drop 
 him from yours ? ' 
 
 ' Oh dear no, not so far as I am concerned. 
 I am not particular lest any offence should come 
 between the wind and my gentility, and my 
 friends know my Bohemian tendencies. My 
 acquaintances are aware beforehand of the risks 
 they run in countenancing me. Besides, the 
 Constables, as everybody has heard, are blood 
 relations of mine, and it does not suit my pride 
 to throw them over, though they were to take 
 to highway robbery, instead of grinding corn
 
 188 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 and baking bread, as they have done all along,' 
 said Louisa Hilliard, raising her head with a 
 genuinely aristocratic movement, notwithstand- 
 ing the shortness of her neck. c Then,' she 
 resumed in her usual tone, ' I should lose the 
 opportunity of seeing Fan stiffening into stone 
 and at the same time kindling into a white heat 
 before the bitter draught she has to swallow. 
 And when all is said, Oliver Constable cannot 
 get rid of the rather important items that he 
 has been bred a university man, and has suc- 
 ceeded to a considerable patrimony, even though 
 he should be eccentric enough to knead dough 
 with his own hands or carry round a basket of 
 loaves like St. Elizabeth on his head.' Mrs. 
 Hilliard ended hastily with a greater concession 
 to public opinion than her previous sentence had 
 implied. 
 
 The next moment she began to laugh at 
 the picture she had conjured up. ' I think I 
 see him,' she exclaimed, in high glee ; ■ as if he
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 189 
 
 did not make a sufficient spectacle of himself 
 already — an Adonis who must contort himself 
 into a Caliban — what a waste of good looks ! ' 
 
 ' I do not agree with you,' said Catherine, 
 with her sincerity as striking and more 
 rampant than Fan Constable's. ' In the first 
 place, he is not an Adonis, though he is a fairly 
 handsome man. In the second, I should hate 
 good looks which were not liable to be affected 
 by temper and mood. They would be little 
 better than those of a barber's block. As a 
 contrast, I could easily understand the fascina- 
 tion of the mobile ugliness of a Mirabeau. An 
 Adonis liable to be replaced at any moment by 
 a Caliban, is not at all a bad idea for enhancing 
 the fugitive graces of Adonis. But Oliver 
 Constable is not an Adonis.' 
 
 1 So be it, since you will have it so,' said 
 Mrs. Hilliard, shrugging her shoulders. ' But 
 my theory of real good looks is that they 
 should rise superior to every vicissitude.
 
 190 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 Oliver Constable doth profess too much. I 
 do not say he is intentionally hypocritical, 
 but I imagine he has been nettled by his 
 connection with trade, and now he is going 
 to brazen it out, and thrust it down people's 
 throats, forcing his fellow-creatures to own that 
 there is nothing like trade in the end. Very 
 likely, too, he is not averse to drawing more 
 money from money-making concerns. What 
 more natural than that he should have in- 
 herited the trading spirit, and be still keener in 
 business than his father was ? Only he ought 
 not to assume a cloak of philanthropy.' 
 
 Mrs. Hilliard deprecated enthusiasm as 
 stoutly as if she had been a great diplomatist, and 
 distrusted every profession which had not in it a 
 large leaven of openly proclaimed self-interest 
 and cynicism, while in her cheerful pessimism 
 she treated the reverse as a good joke. 
 
 1 The game is not worth the candle,' said
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 191 
 
 Catherine, letting her heavily weighted eyelids 
 drop. 
 
 4 It is far worse than that. Oliver Con- 
 stable's crotchet will not merely come to grief 
 like other crotchets, it will serve to unsettle the 
 young man. It will cost him the fair start in 
 life he might have commanded, and of which 
 he might have made something, if he has a 
 tithe of the ability which has been liberally 
 attributed to him. Though I laughed at first, 
 and though I cannot help smiling still, at what 
 I foresee of the manifestations of Fan's wrath, 
 still as an older woman and a relative of the 
 family, however remote, I am sorry. I have 
 sufficient grace left for that,' said Mrs. Hilliard, 
 with greater seriousness and with some genuine 
 good feeling. 
 
 Catherine continued to look as if she saw 
 no cause either for joy or sorrow, as if she 
 were drearily impervious to emotion from the 

 
 192 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 actual world outside herself aud her books. 
 Catherine's faith and hope in humanity had 
 reached the lowest ebb. 
 
 Oliver Constable's aims would meet with 
 nothing at the Meadows, save ridicule on the 
 one hand, and unbelief on the other.
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 193 
 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 Oliver's proclamation in the mill and 
 the bakehouse. 
 
 Old Peter Constable had been a good master 
 in more senses than one — a better master, inas- 
 much as he and his servants understood each 
 other, than his son seemed likely to prove. 
 Peter had kept his men long in his service, but 
 it so happened that at this date, from death and 
 other weeders-out of grey-headed workpeople, 
 the men in the mill were comparatively young. 
 The head man, who had been promoted re- 
 cently, was not older than Oliver himself, and 
 as yet supported such dignity as he had to 
 maintain in a sheepish fashion, while his 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 trumpet still gave forth an uncertain sound. 
 Accordingly, the new master's announcement, 
 though it excited a good deal of curiosity, drew 
 forth no protest, not even a private one, in this 
 quarter. 
 
 Oliver's little speech was made with a 
 great effort in a pause of the drowsy hum of 
 the machinery and the equally lulling splash of 
 the water — churned into the likeness of foaming 
 milk by the rapid revolutions of the mill wheel. 
 In the middle of the self-consciousness and con- 
 fusion which beset him, and disturbed the clear 
 sequence of his best thoughts and ideas, Oliver 
 made it be heard and understood that he was to 
 keep on the mill and take the chief manage- 
 ment in the room of his father. He succeeded 
 in saying that he expected the men to do him 
 faithful service, while he would try his best to 
 make their close connection the mutual benefit 
 it ought to be. He hoped that each man of 
 them, as well as himself, saw only one interest
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 195 
 
 between master and servant, and would be 
 ready to back him in trying to do his duty. 
 Therefore, as he would not stint them in their 
 wages, without a good cause which he should 
 put plainly before them, or ask them to make 
 bricks without straw — that is, to grind corn 
 without sufficient water power, mechanical 
 power, reasonable time and competent guid- 
 ance — so he trusted they would be prepared to 
 play their pari: in furnishing the due amount of 
 labour, and not demean themselves to any of 
 the tricks of palming off bad, slovenly, half- 
 completed work, for good and thorough work, 
 which were bringing labour into general dis- 
 repute, and threatening to become the curse 
 and ruin of the integrity and prosperity of 
 England, where employers and employed were 
 concerned. Oliver told them frankly that for 
 their sake — no less than for his own, he 
 would not consent to take scamped work, or 
 any known lazy, knavish substitute for honest 
 
 o 2
 
 196 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 work, from the best and most skilled workmen, 
 in other respects, among them. 
 
 In return, his workpeople had a right to 
 require from him not only punctual payment of 
 their wages, but intelligent consideration of their 
 position, helpful sympathy with their efforts, 
 forbearance for their blunders, as he should 
 claim tolerance from them for his mistakes. 
 Although he had thought it advisable to begin 
 by warning them of what he could not and 
 ought not to permit in their relation, he also 
 told them what they were not called upon to 
 bear from him — heartless indifference to their 
 welfare, and unprincipled gambling witli flesh 
 and blood, as the means of keeping up the game 
 of speculation rather than fair trade. He was 
 ready to trust them for the loyal discharge of 
 their obligations, till they were put to the 
 proof. He asked them in return to trust his 
 father's son till they learned to know him better 
 as their master.
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 1 07 
 
 If it was a strain upon Oliver Constable to 
 make such a speech except to his cronies, and 
 he only made it by a kind of mental and 
 physical convulsion, it was also a strain upon 
 the young men in the mill to listen properly. 
 They could not compose themselves to catch 
 half the words, far less their meaning. They 
 grinned and gaped at each other, and every 
 man looked how his immediate neighbour was 
 conducting himself, rather than attended to 
 Oliver. Yet they did not fail to develop in- 
 stantly keen criticism of what might be called 
 Oliver's style of public speaking. ' Goin' to 
 school and college hain't made him speak out, 
 or thump with his fist in the right place, like 
 old Sam Snuffles the Methody, as roars hisself 
 hoarse, and lashes all around him so that a 
 chap has to duck his head for safety. Old 
 Sam beats the young master, old Sam does, 
 hout and hout,' reflected one lad, in a vein of 
 class conceit and agreeable superciliousness.
 
 198 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 Another promising youth, who had been 
 reared at a seaport, made an apt comparison in 
 his mind between the speaker and a heavily- 
 laden vessel, sailing against the wind, labouring 
 and tacking ; ' and if I was only near him, I 
 would lay you any odds but I'd hear his 
 timbers groaning,' the ingenious youngster 
 silently pursued the simile which he was reserv- 
 ing for future use. 
 
 But Ted Green, the head man in the mill, 
 never got beyond the news that ' the concern ' 
 was not to stand still or be transferred to other 
 ownership, which might have endangered Ted's 
 late rise in the world. He pondered through- 
 out the whole of the remaining sentences, on 
 the substance of the introductory remark. He 
 wished he could go home to his wife and re- 
 peat to her the welcome assurance. Wishes 
 were useless in the present case, they could not 
 even free Ted from the responsibility of acting 
 as the mouthpiece of the men under him in
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 199 
 
 replying to the address. Naturally, Ted only 
 replied to what had gone into his ears and 
 taken hold of his mind. Still, as the intelligence 
 grasped by him had been of a pleasant sort, one 
 might have expected that there would have 
 been warmth, at least, in the partial response. 
 But Ted was stolid as well as stupid — a large, 
 heavy-looking, fair-complexioned young man, 
 with the fairness increased to positive pallor 
 by such a plentiful application of flour to the 
 skin as would have put to shame the thick 
 powdering preceding the thicker painting of 
 the fine ladies of the last century. Ted leant 
 against the door-post with that hopeless in- 
 capacity to stand upright which is mostly 
 shown by sailors on firm ground. ' You aire, 
 sir,' said Ted, abruptly and concisely, with 
 idiotic vagueness and apparently the utmost 
 phlegm. 
 
 Oliver had to knit his brows and think for 
 a moment before he recognised that the two
 
 200 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 words replied concisely to the single statement 
 that he was to keep on the mill, while they 
 were totally irrelevant to what he considered 
 the gist of the speech which he had pumped up 
 by a severe struggle out of the depth of the 
 temporary chaos of his mind. It sounded as if 
 Ted and his fellows dismissed that with cynical 
 contempt and only troubled themselves to 
 grapple with the bit of information which was 
 practical in their eyes. 
 
 c Well, I take it, since there is no question 
 of parting company, me and my mates here 
 don't object to present terms — not at present/ 
 Ted resumed and ended with stiff and wary, 
 but unmistakable condescension, the moment 
 the decision had, in his judgment, passed over 
 to the men. ' Not at present, sir,' the young 
 millers confirmed their leader's opinion with one 
 voice, as if it were worked by the mill machin- 
 ery, and rendered a little husky and obscure 
 by the pervading dust.
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 201 
 
 Oliver's gravity was nearly upset. At the 
 same time, lie was aware of a slight sense of 
 repulse, and consequent disappointment, which 
 he said to himself proved him to be the invete- 
 rately sanguine and hasty beggar with whose 
 foolish traits he ought at this date to have been 
 familiar enough to overcome them, and set their 
 reactionary influence at defiance. 
 
 But he could not help looking forward to 
 receiving a little more encouragement in the 
 bakehouse, were it only in an indignant appre- 
 hension of some of his inferences, and a dogged 
 assertion of a working baker's rights, including 
 that of testing the quality of his work, and of 
 dealing with his master, in the full bloom of 
 class prejudice, as his natural enemy. It was 
 all very well to speak of the supeiior comfort 
 and general agreeability of a miller's life over 
 that of a baker. The former had the advan- 
 tage in the matter of picturesqueness like the 
 toil of the day labourer in the fields over the
 
 202 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 artisan's — above all the petty tradesman's occu- 
 pations. Yet there could be no comparison 
 — taking the two trades en masse — of which 
 was the more intelligent of the two. 
 
 There were honourable exceptions of 
 ploughmen-poets and young shepherds, among 
 the lowly pastoral hills, who had lived to 
 become — like David, king of Israel — leaders 
 of men. But the exceptions only proved the 
 rule. 
 
 In the same line of argument the sallow- 
 faced journeymen bakers, with their complexions 
 bleached by so much of their lives spent in the 
 atmosphere of the oven, even the forward lads 
 who, after the ancient fashion of Pharaoh's 
 chief baker, poised on their heads baskets full 
 of ' all manner of baked meats ' or more pon- 
 derous loaves, and traversed the streets of Friar- 
 ton, had their minds and their very faces 
 sharpened by contact, at once wider and closer, 
 with their fellows. And the bakers were as far
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 203 
 
 in intellectual advance of the manly young 
 louts of millers whose employment consisted 
 chiefly in heaving up and down sacks of corn 
 and flour, and mechanically feeding the mill, as 
 the millers were before ordinary farm servants. 
 Oliver counted, too, on Jim Hull, his 
 father's old factotum and right-hand man, such 
 a long- established ' institution ' in the bakehouse 
 and shop, that Peter Constable had been wont 
 to say, Jim was not only a great deal better 
 acquainted with the details of the business than 
 he, Peter, had been able to continue, so that he 
 should not like to venture on any step without 
 Jim's concurrence, but that, in fact, he would 
 hardly consent to such a liberty taken with 
 him and his position. He knew his own im- 
 portance, and while he had the interest of the 
 master as much at heart as any Constable of 
 them all could have it, Jim was just a trifle 
 inclined to take the rule into his own hands 
 and reign on his own account.
 
 204 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 Oliver had compared Jim Hull to those 
 mayors of the palace who had founded the 
 Carlo vingian dynasty in the west of Europe ; 
 but while Oliver himself felt by no means 
 inclined to act the lackadaisically sentimental 
 part of the long-haired monarchs of France, 
 he believed he might reckon on his man for 
 something shrewd and telling, whether on his 
 master's side or against him. And Oliver secretly 
 sighed for a foeman worthy of his steel, for the 
 stimulus of the sharpest opposition to balance 
 the enervating languor induced by his sister 
 Fan's despairing acquiescence, and Ted Green 
 and his companions' mortifying indifference 
 where Oliver's will was concerned. 
 
 The Constables' extensive bakehouse and 
 shop at Friarton bore no resemblance in any re- 
 spect to Friarton Mill. In place of being a ven- 
 erable structure — half superannuated, it was a 
 comparatively new building furnished with every 
 modern improvement, in full activity. Indeed
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 205 
 
 it had been erected by Peter Constable's enter- 
 prise when he began to flourish greatly in his 
 twin trades. The large and somewhat staring 
 shop had an intimation inscribed over the door, 
 4 Peter Constable, Baker and Confectioner,' and 
 the pledge was fulfilled in the display of every 
 description of British bread within the windows. 
 The shop and its double sign stood out boldly 
 and with perfect confidence among the shops in 
 the old-fashioned High Street where the weekly 
 corn market was still held, on the pavement 
 before the door of the Ayott Arms Inn. Old 
 Peter Constable had attended the corn market 
 with the regularity of clock-work, and had en- 
 joyed the opportunity afforded him, in the 
 intervals between inspecting samples of grain, 
 of looking over the way with entire com- 
 placency at the handsome shop and bakehouse 
 which were among the fruits of his industry 
 and enterprise. The immediate vicinity of the 
 shop had also enabled Peter to entertain hos-
 
 206 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 pitably select little parties of his customers 
 among the farmers, in the hack shop, and to 
 conclude bargains with them there in greater 
 privacy than could be found in the street, or in 
 the commercial room of the inn. Fan Con- 
 stable, in walking up Friarton High Street, had 
 not looked upon the great bakeshop with the 
 same favourable eyes. But she was a true and 
 high-spirited woman. She had never gone out 
 of her way or got up an excuse to avoid passing 
 her father's shop-door. She had walked 
 straight by it, though she might not have been 
 able to prevent her foolish colour from rising, 
 in company with Mrs. Fremantle, and while 
 Fan saw Clara Houghton advancing in the 
 opposite direction. Fan would have risked 
 meeting Clara on the doorstep, and if the vicar's 
 daughter had declined to own acquaintance 
 with a valuable ally and an old school-fellow 
 to boot because of the fire of half-mischievou-. 
 half-malicious eyes which Fan knew so well
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 207 
 
 were watching the encounter, then let the 
 friendship come to a violent end on the spot, 
 the miller and baker's daughter would have 
 said without hesitation, though its destruction 
 must undoubtedly have proved a blow to Fan. 
 She had never failed her father or even be- 
 trayed any repugnance to joining him at the 
 shop when she was in town with him on market 
 days, and he was to drive her home in the pony 
 phaeton, which to please Fan had superseded 
 a gig, just as the gig had in its time, to please 
 Fan's mother, taken the place of a spring cart. 
 
 Fan had only not been equal to getting up 
 an enthusiasm for the contents of pans and trays, 
 in well-raised loaves and crisp biscuits, and she 
 did not see that she was called upon — good 
 housekeeper though she was — to be one of the 
 severely initiated in the inner mysteries of 
 bread made with or without yeast, steamed or 
 not steamed. She was guilty of greater wilful 
 ignorance in the matter of bread than in any
 
 208 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 other domestic question ; though of course she 
 was acquainted with such an A B C piece of 
 knowledge as how to distinguish a cottage 
 from a pan loaf when she saw them, while she 
 was perfectly aware that the Polley girls had a 
 joke among them and their companions, of her 
 affected ignorance in this particular. 
 
 It had certainly vexed Fan when her father, 
 in his satisfaction with his bread, would illus- 
 trate its excellence by lightly patting the crust 
 or gently pinching the crumb. She confessed 
 to herself she hated to see him on an emergency, 
 when he had sent the shopman out and no 
 other man or boy was in the way, quietly step 
 behind the counter, and in the innocence of his 
 heart, sell a twopenny loaf to a working 
 woman or a halfpenny biscuit to a child. 
 And Fan had the conviction that rather than 
 witness Oliver, with his college breeding, and 
 the gentleman-like character impressed on his 
 very twists and grimaces, demean himself to
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 209 
 
 dispense the staff of life, as his father had done 
 before him, to his fellow- townspeople, she 
 would herself go behind the counter and wait 
 on the mocking public. It is to be feared that 
 Fan would have offered cakes and buns with a 
 tragedy air which would have repelled all save 
 the most persistent buyer. 
 
 Oliver had assured himself that he had long 
 ago got over the boyish weakness — barely ex- 
 cusable in a boy, and the paltriest of all follies 
 in a man — which, to do men justice, a large pro- 
 portion of them cast off with the growth of 
 their beards, of wincing under the knowledge 
 that his father had been in trade — in the 
 primitive trade — of a baker. Oliver had fancied 
 he had well-nigh forgotten the sneaking sense 
 of affront at the pit whence he had been dug. 
 But it seemed the sillier and more Jeames- 
 like a social definition was, the more it stuck 
 in the consciousness of its victim. Oliver, to 
 his disgust, experienced a sensation of personal 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 discomfort, an inclination to avoid public atten- 
 tion, when he walked into the Friarton bake- 
 shop in the light of the heir come to take 
 possession. He had to relieve his self-disgust 
 by defying his self-consciousness, standing up 
 as large as life and lounging purposely in the 
 sight of the bystanders for a few minutes. He 
 had to sit down in the retirement of the back- 
 shop and smoke a pipe to recover his equa- 
 nimity as he meditated on the manliness of 
 Thackeray's Philip on his way through the 
 world, bowing with perfect nonchalance and 
 satisfaction from the ■ knife-board ' of an 
 omnibus, to his fashionable friends in their 
 carriages. Oliver ended by recalling the occa- 
 sion when as a small boy he was led by his 
 father through the same premises, then in the 
 process of building. Little Oliver had enjoyed 
 the inspection at least as much as his father had 
 enjoyed making it with him, and had listened 
 with pride while the owner of the place told 
 the child — when there w T as no thought of
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 211 
 
 Oliver's developing into a scholar — a gentleman 
 far above such low aims as baking and selling 
 bread — that the buildings would be his one day 
 — he should get the chief good out of them after 
 they had paid their cost to the builder. ' And 
 you'll make something worth while out of them, 
 Nolly ? You'll be up to all the new improve- 
 ments that ain't mere catchpennies ? You'll 
 bake and sell the best and cheapest bread in 
 the county — won't you now, my little chap ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, Far'er,' little Oliver had answered, 
 with unhesitating cheerfulness, as children will 
 undertake without doubt or fear to conquer 
 kingdoms. 
 
 After that recollection, Oliver had only to 
 rise and perform a pantomime of freeing his 
 arms from an encumbrance, to get rid of what 
 shreds remained of that parti-coloured garment 
 of the conventional fool, which we have most of 
 us considerable difficulty to escape from wearing, 
 each in his turn. 
 
 p 2
 
 rsf 
 
 212 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 Oliver was fit to go to the bakehouse, and, in 
 the sweat of his brow, deliver his speech a second 
 time — in this instance to his bakers. They were a 
 set of men both young and middle-aged, some 
 portly, some lean, all more or less yellow rather 
 than white-skinned — like the millers, for these 
 were not the lads who spent a large part of their 
 day in the open air distributing the bread. 
 These were journeymen who had not their time 
 at their own disposal, and even if they had, 
 would not, unless in perhaps one exceptional 
 case, have devoted their leisure with the en- 
 thusiasm of genius to the pursuit of any branch 
 of natural history, taking the student out into 
 the fields and woods like the famous baker 
 whose book was the iron-bound coast and the 
 bleak moors of Caithness. 
 
 The sallow complexions of the bakers were 
 brought out in relief by their white caps as they 
 stood witli their shirt sleeves rolled up to their
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 213 
 
 elbows. Th? men had left their baking boards 
 for the day, but still had to keep a vigilant eye 
 on the ovens in the background. As the party 
 came forward to listen to the new owner of the 
 business, they fell naturally into the attitude of 
 a deputation, with one man representing their 
 leader pushed well into the foreground, who 
 instinctively caught up his apron under his left 
 arm as a sign in character. But he was not 
 Jim Hull. 
 
 Jim Hull was in a white suit like the rest. 
 But his suit was conspicuously shrunk at the 
 wrists and ankles as if he had grown away from 
 the original fit in his growing days and yet had 
 adhered to the measurement in anticipation of 
 the time when he should begin tD grow down, 
 not up, to bend nearer the eartli instead of 
 raising his head high above it. Jim stood a 
 little apart from the group of bakers and their 
 future master, as Oliver addressed his views to
 
 214 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 his workmen. Contrary to Oliver's anticipa- 
 tions, Jim preserved at least the attitude of 
 neutrality in the encounter. 
 
 Jim Hull was an elderly man with a com- 
 pact face, as if his rather neat and regular 
 features had been compressed so as to take up 
 the least room. He had a remarkably clear, 
 keen eye under the grizzled hair which hung low 
 on his square forehead, for a man approaching 
 threescore. He had been a faithful servant in 
 the Constables' service from youth to approach- 
 ing aae. He was not without a kind of feudal 
 sentiment both to the family and the business. 
 It gave him a certain amount of gratification 
 that they should still remain united — that 
 Master Oliver had not cut the whole concern 
 and turned his back on it as if it were a dis- 
 grace. On the other hand, Jim had his own 
 deeply rooted prejudices and his own schemes, 
 and he was capable, as his former master had 
 foreseen, of becoming factious and troublesome
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 215 
 
 if he were thwarted in his opinions, and mor- 
 tified in his conceit. 
 
 Jim had not in the least anticipated the 
 course Oliver Constable was taking ; so far from 
 it, Jim had entertained a project of risking 
 his bachelor savings and enabling a favourite 
 nephew who was already a tolerably successful 
 master baker in a neighbouring village, to buy 
 the Constables' business, and carry it on in 
 Friarton with the further help of Jim's ex- 
 perience. 
 
 But, to do the old man justice, he would 
 have resigned this private plan with less re- 
 luctance if he had been satisfied with Oliver 
 Constable's rearing, or with the young man 
 personally. 
 
 Jim listened and reflected, standing all alive 
 and vigilant with his hands clasped behind him. 
 ' Peter Constable kneaded his batch by my side* 
 many's the day, when we were lads. He could 
 set the sponge better than I could, when we were
 
 216 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 fellow-apprentices to his father. Peter's mind 
 was in the baking business from the first. Now 
 young Oliver has been bred different, and his 
 mind has been in his books — that's what makes 
 me mistrustful of his proposal, and not alto- 
 gether agreeable to it, though it comes from 
 his father's son and does him no discredit — I'm 
 bound to say,' thought Jim. ' 'Any Eeddock 
 can look out for himself, and I'm not pledged 
 to take him up, if I were sure of this turn of 
 affairs. But young Oliver's an amature — that's 
 what he is — and no good comes of amatures. 
 He'll make ducks and drakes of as fine and solid 
 a business as ever three generations got together ; 
 and he's a crotchety lad, too. Hear to him, 
 what he's telling the lads ! about everything 
 being above-board — as if there ever was a trade 
 without its secrets — and of his not passing over 
 a man's shirking his work and disobeying 
 orders, as if any tradesman — be he ever so 
 flourishing — can afford in them times to quarrel
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 217 
 
 with his best hand, maybe, because he has a 
 mind of his own, or will go on the spree nows 
 and thens, or is not careful to make his batches 
 every bit as light and sweet as they may be. 
 Master Oliver has to find this is a world in 
 which a man must live and let live and act con- 
 formable to circumstances. 
 
 ' He ought to be rare and perfect as a master 
 that demands a perfect servant, and them is not 
 the days for that uncommon commodity when 
 the servants are like to have the ruling of the 
 masters — instead of the masters the picking and 
 choosing of the servants. This young fellow 
 has to learn life out of college, and he had as 
 well learn Ins trade at the same time before he 
 takes upon him to be a master baker.' 
 
 But Jim Hull kept his counsel in the mean- 
 while. It was the foremost man of the group 
 of bakers who spoke out in reply to Oliver. 
 * Do you mean to say, sir,' said the man, not 
 disrespectfully, but with a flavour of offence in
 
 218 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 his tone, ' that there are to be a set of fresh 
 arrangements made here, and that we are to 
 consent beforehand — without knowing what we 
 are doing — to a whole lot of new-fangled ways?' 
 And there was a murmur of assent to the ob- 
 jection from the men behind him. 
 
 ' I don't see the obligation, Webster,' said 
 Oliver, who simply knew the man by name. 
 
 Webster was a young man of not more 
 than five-and-twenty, though he was put 
 prominently forward by his fellows. He had 
 bushy sandy-coloured hair, and a large up- 
 turned nose with deep lion-like lines drawn 
 from its base to the corners of his mouth. 
 
 Oliver spoke calmly, but he felt in some 
 degree taken aback and ruffled by the com- 
 mentary on his words. ' The business has been 
 conducted on the same principles all along. 
 But if I see it advisable to make alterations, I 
 shall let you know, when you must be prepared 
 to agree to them, or quit my employment.'
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 219 
 
 * All right, sir,' said Webster, promptly. * Of 
 course you are entitled to say that much, while 
 you will not refuse to allow that there are two 
 at a bargain -making.' 
 
 So the brief colloquy, which was only 
 1 feeling the way ' on the part of both master 
 and man, came to an abrupt conclusion. 
 
 Oliver returned to the back-shop, taking 
 Jim Hull with him. 
 
 ' Sit down, Jim, and make yourself comfort- 
 able,' said Oliver, bringing out a bottle of ale 
 and glasses from the familiar cupboard and 
 taking the second armchair. 'Now, what 
 about that lad Webster who spoke up for the 
 others ? ' 
 
 ' He's a good baker when he likes, which is 
 more than can be said of most of your speechi- 
 fiers and politicians,' said Jim. 
 
 ' Then he'll like to bake well for me, or 
 he'll turn out of the bakehouse,' said Oliver, 
 holding up his glass to the light.
 
 220 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 'Stop a bit, not so fast,' said Jim, putting 
 •down his glass for a moment, after a testing sip. 
 4 Your father always kept good ale in cask and 
 in bottle because he gave it time to clear and 
 ripen, so he did. You had better think — if I'm 
 at liberty to speak,' — he paused, and Oliver 
 nodded. 'You see, I was afraid new men 
 might mean new manners,' went on Jim, 
 clearing his throat. ' What I was going to say 
 comes to this, where are you to get a better 
 man to put in Sam Webster's place? You 
 must consider that, sir, before you speak of 
 dismissing Sam hot and sharp. Good bakers, 
 in a country town in especial, ain't as plentiful 
 as blackberries, now-a-days, Master Oliver ; 
 and if Sam go and stump the neighbourhood 
 — that, and reading, and holding forth on 
 them newspapers is second nature to the fellow 
 — if lie tell everywhere what an oonreasonable 
 master young Constable is like to be, why 3-ou 
 may have to whistle long enough for a new
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 221 
 
 baker fit to stand in the shoes of Sam, though 
 he do be off and on troublesome/ 
 
 ' You and Sam had better wait and find if I 
 am an unreasonable master,' said Oliver, with a 
 smile. ■ Who is letting his imagination go 
 ahead, I should like to know ? I made no un- 
 reasonable stipulation. I did not bid the men 
 do by me what I am not willing to do by them. 
 If I am to be a master baker I shall not 
 feed my customers on husks and worse, Sam 
 Webster and his allies may rest assured of that 
 — and in order that I may be honest in all my 
 dealings, I will have proper work out of my 
 men.' 
 
 Jim looked dubious. ' Excuse me, sir, but 
 do you know what proper work of this sort is, 
 and what are the conditions of work in general 
 at this date ? You don't mean to be oonrea- 
 sonable, but a man's intentions and his deeds 
 don't always square.' 
 
 'Granted. But do you mean there are
 
 222 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 trades-unions and strikes among the Friarton 
 bakers, and that we may be reduced any day — 
 not as a matter of eccentric taste, or in obedience 
 to a doctor's prescription, but as a case of neces- 
 sity — to eat unleavened bread like the Jews hi 
 the Passover week, or to bake at home, a lost 
 art where housewives and maid-servants are 
 concerned ? ' 
 
 c It ain't a laughing matter,' Jim rebuked the 
 young man's levity ; ' and if the things them- 
 selves ain't here — and I have not heard tell yet 
 of trades-unions and strikes among the bakers 
 in Friarton — do you think their spirit ain't about 
 in the air ? Do you think the bakers alone of 
 working men,' continued Jim, with an accent of 
 injured esprit de corps , ' will be content to re- 
 main without a voice, ay, and a precious influ- 
 ential voice, in all that concerns them nearly — 
 their hours of work, their mode of work, and 
 mode of pay, and all the rest of it ? Are the 
 bakers to be left behind when every other
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 223 
 
 specie of working man is having his say ? I 
 should not have consented to that myself, when 
 I was a young baker ; now, I am nigh an old 
 man,' Jim cooled down at the recollection, ' and 
 I'm free to admit that I don't see much good 
 comes of speechifying and vapouring,' ended 
 Jim, drinking off his ale and drawing a long 
 sigh after the refreshment. 
 
 1 Well hit at me, old " specie," ' thought 
 Oliver, while he said, quietly, ' Nobody is pre- 
 venting any man from having his say in what 
 particularly concerns him. It is one of the privi- 
 leges that living in the present generation has 
 given him. I should be the last person to object 
 to it. I intended the men to take what I said to 
 them into consideration ; only I can't, for the life 
 of me, see what just and rational argument they 
 have to bring against it ; I touched on no debat- 
 able point. If they are worth their salt in 
 morals as in ability, they are surely willing to 
 give a fair exchange of work for wages. And
 
 224 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 if the men have a grain of common sense, they 
 must grant that no organised system of work 
 can be maintained without one person in 
 authority to enforce discipline on those under 
 
 him.' 
 
 1 The capital and labour question ain't so 
 easily settled as you suppose, Master Oliver,' 
 said Jim, shaking his head doggedly if some- 
 what evasively. 'At the best it is a very 
 ticklish matter, and I only hope you won't burn 
 your fingers meddling with it.' 
 
 ' I can guess you are of opinion that I am 
 not setting about the task in the proper fashion ; 
 but wait till you see how I get on, Jim,' said 
 Oliver, good-humouredly ; ' don't damp my 
 spirits by forecasting evil.' 
 
 c I wouldn't wish to do that,' said Jim, more 
 formally than heartily or cheerfully. ' That don't 
 belong to my place. But I'm nigh an old man, 
 about as old as your father, and grown grey 
 with the Constables : if putting my experience
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 225 
 
 at your service could have been of any use, it 
 belonged to my dooty.' 
 
 ' Thanks,' said Oliver, quickly. * You are 
 quite right to ease your conscience. But I am 
 afraid I must earn my experience like the rest 
 of the world — I must have my fling — try to 
 work out my theories, and when they break 
 down, then begin to mend them — do you take 
 me, Jim ? ' 
 
 k Oh, ay, sir,' said Jim with polite dryness, 
 * and I had as well say good morning to you, 
 and go about my own business in the bake- 
 shop.' 
 
 Oliver let him go, and sat alone twisting 
 his stalwart body in his armchair. ' The game 
 would not be worth the candle,' he reflected, 
 4 if one paid heed only to these clods in the 
 mill and cheeky swaggerers in the bakehouse ; 
 and there is old Jim, conservative to the back- 
 bone, even while he is full to the tongue of 
 class prejudice and jealousy. He feels the 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 world turning upside down witli him ; yet he 
 sets his face against the only hope of control for 
 the new spirit. But the principles of right and 
 wrong are eternal and as capable of being 
 fought out in a mill and a bakehouse as on any 
 other battle-field.'
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 22T 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 THE NEW TENANTS OF COPLEY FARM. 
 
 Oliver was standing before the mulberry-bush 
 in the mill-house court watching the colony of 
 white ducks which waddled up from the water 
 and claimed their right in the dropping mul- 
 berries. 
 
 He had stepped out of one of the windows 
 of the parlour, which Fan, with tacit reproach 
 and soreness of spirit, had re-constituted the 
 family sitting-room. Since Oliver chose to be a 
 miller and baker, the old mill-house parlour was 
 in keeping with his calling and good enough for 
 him. Oliver welcomed the change with much 
 satisfaction which escaped being damped from
 
 "228 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 his want of full knowledge of what was passing 
 in his sister's mind, and his absolute incapacity 
 of sympathising with it. 
 
 He stood hunching up his shoulders, his 
 hands in his pockets. He was bareheaded, so 
 that the light summer wind lifted his hair, 
 blowing it across his forehead as near his eyes 
 as the shortness of the locks would allow, with- 
 out discomposing him. The same wind every 
 moment plucked off and strewed about the last 
 full-blown red and white rose petals and re- 
 versed the leaves of the mulberry and the 
 willow round the corner, turning their white 
 sides uppermost and silvering whole branches 
 at once. 
 
 Oliver was wondering why he should feel 
 any particular pleasure in contemplating the 
 ducks wriggling their short necks with delight, 
 rolling about like ships at sea, quivering their 
 tail-tufts of feathers, making rushes to snatch 
 the beaded maroon morsel, each duck from his
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 229 1 
 
 neighbour, at last gobbling clown the mulberry 
 with an intensity of relish which in its breadth 
 of display was farcical in the extreme. Bat 
 Oliver did find so much satisfaction in the 
 spectacle that he was tempted to propose to 
 take Sally Pope's office out of her hands, and 
 feed the ducks from their basket of mill refuse 
 every morning. They would soon learn to 
 know his step and voice as they knew Sally's. 
 Pooh ! it was all egotism, to be gratified by a 
 duck's recognition. It was a thread of vanity 
 which in Eousseau reached the diseased pitch 
 of imagining that the sparrows were chattering 
 jibes at him. But how much more lovable, 
 after all, if less respectable, was a vain man or 
 woman than your Lucifer or Luciferina who- 
 made a boast of his or her proud indifference ! 
 
 Oliver was aware that he had a sneaking- 
 fondness for approbation. He would have 
 liked Ted Green and every hulking hobble-de- 
 hoy about the mill, as well as Fan and Sally
 
 230 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 Pope with her subordinates, to have a real 
 regard for him and trust in him. He would 
 have liked old Jim Hull and the men in 
 the bakehouse to believe that he meant them 
 well, and would serve them no less than himself, 
 if he could. It was a weakness of course, and 
 all that he was likely to get for his pains, was 
 that everybody would incline to suspect him of 
 being a humbug where he was not a fool, and 
 no one would understand that he was setting 
 himself, according to his light, to be a good 
 citizen, though the effort in his case went in 
 some respects against the grain. 
 
 Catherine Hilliard had plenty of sympathy 
 and admiration to spare for every good citizen 
 and patriot, a history of whose achievements 
 got between the boards of a book ; nay, she 
 wasted interest and regard on some patriots of 
 rather doubtful complexion — Count Egmont 
 and Camille Desmoulins, for example. £he 
 only saw them in their dress-coats and revived
 
 DULLER AND BAKER. 231 
 
 togas, as the men figured in print ; she could not 
 guess that in their dressing-gowns and slippers, 
 or what stood for their undress, the fellows were 
 self-indulgent and ' rough customers ' enough, 
 like ordinary men. But a simple tradesman was 
 nobody in Catherine's eyes, because his ambi- 
 tion reached no higher than to give back to his 
 branch of trade that integrity and excellence 
 which ought to be the crowning distinction of 
 all honest trade in an honest — not to say a 
 Christian nation — because he would magnify his 
 peculiar field of work and make it honourable, 
 feeding the people with material food con- 
 venient for their bodily life, as Frederick Perthes, 
 the prince of booksellers, strove in his day to 
 raise the book trade of Germany and sought 
 to feed the minds and hearts of his countrymen 
 with spiritual food. It was a trifle to her that 
 the faintest approach should be made to ele- 
 vating wdiole classes, with regard to which the 
 present absurd and dishonouring creed was
 
 232 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 that no member could rise without abandoning 
 his homely trade and his fellow-traders. In the 
 name of Heaven, if the craft were honest, could 
 it not be ennobled in its loyal performance ? 
 Had it not been so with many a craft, such as 
 those of the goldsmith, the weaver, and the 
 dyer, now treated with comparative contempt, 
 in old burgher towns and free cities, when the 
 craftsmen were men of genius, skill, and taste 
 far advanced in civilisation ? 
 
 People might tell him — Oliver, that such 
 an ornamental craft as that of a goldsmith, for 
 instance, requiring notable skill and taste, was 
 one thing, and a purely useful business like that 
 of a baker, was another. But he was prepared 
 to show that the fine arts were very far from 
 being what their idle amateur worshippers, not 
 their true and humble disciples, represented 
 them to be, in the economy of a people. He 
 did not cry down art or learning, perhaps it 
 would have been easier for him, on the whole,
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 23 3 
 
 if he had appreciated each of them less. Yet 
 bread — not art — was the staff of life, arid One 
 who had come among them as the King of men 
 had not thought it beneath his Divinity to work 
 miracles in order to give common bread to 
 hungry multitudes. 
 
 There was a notion current among compe- 
 tent authorities, that the physique and stamina 
 of English men and women, especially in the 
 large towns, were undergoing a gradual disas- 
 trous deterioration. If this were true and 
 arrived at its natural culmination, the world 
 might not fare the better for the lapse of that 
 portion of the Anglo-Saxon race which had 
 elected itself, in its more vigorous days, the 
 pioneer of civilisation and the champion of 
 liberty all over the world. Unadulterated 
 food — which also inferred less craving for in- 
 toxicating drink — better lodging, legislation 
 which should enact and compel freer space, 
 purer air, fresher water, and the light of day,.
 
 234 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 ought to do something to arrest the progress 
 downwards. But the great hope, under God 
 and his Son, lay in the recovery of true manli- 
 ness and womanliness ; to work — not dream — 
 1 for the love of the work, and not for the wages 
 alone ; to be in the world as one who served 
 with a will ; to recognise fully that life did not 
 consist of its lower gains, equally Philistine 
 whether they belonged to a respectable bank- 
 book or a disreputable betting-book. For 
 when one came to the rank materialism of the 
 things, it did not so much signify whether the 
 object of desire and attainment implied being 
 made secretary of state or mayor of Friarton, 
 churchwarden of St. Philip's or deacon of the 
 chapel, or whether it descended to the lower 
 level of the possibility of drinking champagne 
 on occasions, as a variety on unlimited gin-and- 
 water. 
 
 Oliver was brought up short in his cogita- 
 tions. He heard footsteps and voices approach;
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 235 
 
 ing, and conjectured they belonged to two men 
 whose figures in grey suits and wide-awakes he 
 had seen ten minutes before, from the other 
 side of the Mill, making their way through 
 Copley Grange Park. He had remarked the 
 new comers particularly, since he had not 
 heard that the Squire had come home, and 
 visitors from that quarter proved comparatively 
 rare when the family were not at Copley 
 Grange. The Mill had to put up with the 
 plague of its picturesqueness, and Oliver found 
 himself called upon to display the good citizen- 
 ship he so insisted upon, in giving up a portion 
 of his privacy to render the picturesqueness 
 public property. He did not come out of the 
 ordeal without flaw. Certainly, he refrained 
 from inaugurating his reign as many another 
 good citizen has inaugurated his, by erecting 
 barriers where his father had raised none. 
 Oliver objected to calling his mill his castle, 
 and defying anybody who was not on mill
 
 236 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 business, and with whom Oliver was not on 
 speaking terms, from approaching its time-mel- 
 lowed walls. Therefore he scouted Ted Green's 
 suggestion to keep a watch-dog, even on chain, 
 and for the protection of the outlying sacks of 
 wheat and flour. 
 
 But Oliver Constable did not show himself 
 remarkably cordial to absolute strangers, es- 
 pecially when they came from Copley Grange. 
 On the contrary, he avoided them almost as 
 resolutely as Fan did. He would make a point 
 that the place should be free to the Dadds and 
 Polleys of Friarton, or, for that matter, to any 
 inhabitant of the town ; for he earnestly wished 
 that his fellow-townsmen of all classes — the 
 lower the better — should profit by the rural 
 beauty of Friarton Mill. But perhaps Cathe- 
 rine Hilliard was right when she said that he 
 looked upon those persons who were not happy 
 enough to belong to the trading class as outside 
 his purpose. Indeed, Oliver Constable's rela-
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 237 
 
 tions with the upper ten at Oxford, and all he 
 had insensibly acquired from them, only ren- 
 dered him more determined to have nothing to 
 do with them. He waged no war with his 
 superiors in social rank, but their respective 
 paths lay wide apart. There were plenty of 
 tuft-hunters and eager satellites struggling in 
 the wake of the objects of their homage without 
 Oliver's adding himself to the number. Indeed, 
 there was danger in the association ; for the 
 mere conception of another social atmosphere 
 had spoilt Fan for her world, and her world 
 for Fan. It should not spoil him — at least, so 
 far as his work was concerned. It is very diffi- 
 cult for an ardent reformer to steer clear of 
 partisanship. 
 
 On the present occasion Oliver put up his 
 back, and turned it in its rounded form on his 
 company. At the same time he accomplished 
 a feat in balancing himself, while winding one 
 long leg round the other, much as if he were
 
 238 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 borrowing a pattern from a duck now standing 
 at ease on a single leg before him. 
 
 ' That's our man,' said a genial voice behind 
 him. ' I thought I knew the back, and the 
 attitude nails him bevond mistake. Constable, 
 what are you doing here ? ' 
 
 Oliver could not lend a deaf ear to the 
 enquiry ; besides, he wondered who was mak- 
 ing it. He wheeled round, and saw that the 
 two figures in grey he had spied from a 
 distance, had developed into two men — with 
 whom he had been on terms of slight acquaint- 
 ance, though they had not lived in his set, at 
 Oxford. But what was a bare acquaintance on 
 the banks of the Isis threatened to assert itself 
 as a positive friendship up in Holmshire, on the 
 threshold of Oliver's mill. 
 
 When Oliver considered Harry Stanhope's 
 rashness and thoughtlessness, Oliver felt Ik* had 
 not a moment to lose. He had never concealed 
 his antecedents like poor Tom Ncaves, but he
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 239 
 
 must now state roundly what they had led to, 
 before Harry swore eternal comradeship on the 
 spot, and poor Horace backed his brother in 
 this as in all else. 
 
 ' What am I doing here ? ' echoed Oliver, 
 with a laugh. ' Everything. I am in my 
 proper place. This is Friarton Mill, and I am 
 the miller.' 
 
 1 Well, this is a go ! ' said Harry, without 
 the least attempt at the concealment of his sur- 
 prise. ' Isn't it awfully jolly, Horry ? ' The 
 brother appealed to nodded in confirmation of 
 the extreme jolliness of the situation, which 
 Oliver was slow to perceive. 
 
 ' I never knew these Stanhopes had such a 
 feeling for natural scenery,' said Oliver to him- 
 self, puzzled at his acquaintances' manner of 
 taking his communication. ' I thought — give 
 Harry a rowing path or a hunting field, and he 
 would ask no more, while the other had not a 
 mind of his own. But I suppose they admire
 
 240 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 this,' and Oliver glanced around him compla- 
 cently. 
 
 But Harry was ready to supply a different 
 •explanation of his enthusiasm. ' I knew you 
 hailed from a farm or a mill, old fellow/ he 
 •said, lightly ; ' but I always thought the " 'Var- 
 sity " old wives were starching and stiffening 
 you, preparatory to turning you out a parson 
 ■or a schoolmaster. I am glad you knew a 
 thing worth two of that. And Horry and I 
 are in great luck to unearth you here.' 
 
 Oliver still remained in a fog as to what the 
 luck could consist of, unless Harry had private 
 views on the fishing in the Brook, and counted 
 on Oliver's making it sure to him. There was 
 one piece of hospitality which, as Oliver was 
 not really a churl, he did not see he could 
 avoid dispensing. He must invite these fellows 
 into the house to join Fan's tea-table. He 
 hoped Fan would forgive it, because they were 
 old college men — not merely sightseers.
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 241 
 
 6 You don't ask what brings us here,' said 
 Harry — clearly eager to tell his secret. ' Why, 
 we are nearly as much at home — at least we 
 shall be soon — as you are. We are the new 
 tenants of Copley Grange Farm. Horry and I 
 are going in for being English yeomen instead 
 of Ceylon coffee planters, as our governors 
 intended we should be. The doctors found 
 Horry's liver would not stand the tropics, and 
 as the old man and I have always stuck 
 together, the entire project fell to the ground. 
 We made up our minds to rough it at home in- 
 stead of in the colonies — to descend a few steps 
 in the ladder here, instead of crossing the seas 
 to do it there. Horry and I ain't either swells 
 or snobs, and we haven't got handles to our 
 names to make the descent more difficult. We 
 thought we should like nothing better than to 
 become yeomen — since we were not born 
 squires and could not very well be gamekeepers 
 or grooms without ceasing to continue our own 
 
 vol. I. R
 
 242 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 masters. There are no English regiments — the 
 more's the pity — such as the French used to have, 
 into which gentlemen cadets could enlist without 
 losing caste altogether, and being reduced to 
 associate with the scum of the streets and the 
 fields in the guard- room. Any people that we 
 have left, to speak of, are all settled in the 
 northern counties, well out of the reach of 
 the trial of coming across Horry and me driving 
 in a market cart, and selling our own pigs. 
 For that matter, princes of the blood and dukes 
 are pleased to play at being farmers, and I do 
 not see why poor gentlemen may not slide 
 down gracefully into the real tiling. We are 
 of age and can do what we like, but we have 
 also persuaded the uncles and aunts into giving 
 their consent to our taking this farm and in- 
 vesting our princely capital in it. We have 
 got a good bailiff to put us up to the wrinkles, 
 and we mean to £0 the whole ho£.' 
 
 4 You haven't asked my advice,' said Oliver,
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 243 
 
 ' but I am afraid it won't answer — this won't 
 answer, Stanhope.' 
 
 4 Now, look here, Constable,' argued the 
 sanguine advocate, ' you think we are going in 
 for being gentlemen farmers, and so will fall 
 between stools, but it is nothing of the kind. 
 Didn't I say we were going the whole hog? 
 Whatever that appropriate phrase may mean, 
 we are to learn to do everything for ourselves, 
 just as we should have done in Queensland or 
 Natal. It is not the season for holding a plough, 
 else I should have tried it to-morrow. But we 
 are in time for the first crop of hay, and we 
 are to help at the harvest. Won't it be jolly 
 fun, like a page out of " The Vicar of Wake- 
 field," which somebody gave me to read when I 
 
 had scarlet fever at school a century ago only 
 
 I am afraid the Miss Primroses are still more 
 out of date, and will not show among the hay- 
 cocks next week. We thought of doing without 
 a woman-servant, and making our own beds 
 
 R 2
 
 244 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 and cooking onr own grub. But since old 
 Horry is not as strong as a horse like me, we 
 judged it better to change our coats by degrees/ 
 ' You were right there,' said Oliver, asking 
 himself whether Harry Stanhope were a greater 
 young fool than he, Oliver, had ever taken the 
 trouble to rate the lad — the most thorough- 
 going donkey Oliver had encountered — whether 
 Harry were in earnest or simply talking bosh, 
 knowing it to be bosh all the time? And if there 
 should turn out to be some foundation for what 
 Stanhope was telling him, as, after all, Oliver had 
 no reason to question, here was a fine compli- 
 cation of the difficulties of his position in these 
 fellows establishing themselves on the next farm 
 to him, with the deliberate intention, however 
 wildly carried out, of exiling themselves from 
 their own class and naturalising themselves in 
 Oliver's! He did not for a moment entertain 
 the idea that the Stanhopes would aid him in 
 his aims. The young men would simply im-
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 245 
 
 port their own faults and follies into a sphere 
 in which the brothers had neither part nor lot, 
 while they would assuredly ruin themselves in 
 a pecuniary sense. 
 
 ' I say, Constable, you are a nice liberal- 
 minded, benevolent fellow, not to speak an en- 
 couraging word to two poor beggars seeking to 
 better themselves,' interposed Harry Stanhope — 
 partly in chaff, partly with a deeper meaning 
 in his words. c You are trying on the super- 
 cilious dodge. But what would you have us 
 turn our white hands to ? ' holding up a pair 
 of paws very brown and a good deal hacked 
 about the knuckles. ' We haven't got any 
 brains to speak of, between the two, Our 
 education has been neglected, what with private 
 tutors and Oxford. Poor Horry was bowled 
 out without any fault of his as soon as the 
 wicket was set up,' he lowered his voice and 
 said the last sentence in a cautious undertone. 
 6 We are a likely pair to shine in the learned
 
 240 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 professions, ain't we ? ' he resumed, with fresh 
 spirit and light bravado. ' All the people who 
 have the misfortune to be connected with us 
 have been in despair about what was to become 
 of us ever since we were small shavers in 
 petticoats. Indeed, I fancy it was rather a 
 mistake our being here at all. They might 
 have disposed of me in a marching regiment, 
 where I might have had a fair chance of being 
 comfortably knocked on the head and decently 
 put out of sight, in a fashion becoming my 
 station. But the Maori or Zulu, or whatever 
 gallant native gentleman was to do the deed, 
 must have looked sharp about it, else I was 
 tolerably certain to go to the dogs or the Jews 
 and create a scandal in the mean time. I put 
 it to you how could I have helped it, Con- 
 stable ? I could not flatter myself, and what 
 was more no groaning old fogey of a relation 
 could cherish the forlorn hope that I was endowed 
 with the genius of keeping out of debt and
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 247 
 
 rising in the army, while all the time I should 
 belong to a set who might be tailors' sons and 
 duffers of various kinds, yet would, for the mo&t 
 part, have ten and twenty guineas to spend in 
 proportion to my one. Then we were two,' — 
 here he dropped his voice again, and spoke more 
 quickly to hide some under-current of feeling. 
 ' By Jove, I was not going to leave him in the 
 lurch, to be recommended to board and vege- 
 tate in the country with one of your needy 
 parsons, as if Horry were a lunatic, or to be 
 treated as a poor relation, and a hanger-on at 
 other men's tables.' 
 
 The speaker, whom Oliver had known in- 
 corrigibly light of heart and light of head 
 in a world where even youthful beards are 
 beginning to wag with ominous seriousness, 
 finished with some genuine though repressed 
 indignation. 
 
 The listener could not refuse to Harry Stan- 
 hope the credit of fidelity to the solitary obliga-
 
 248 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 tion he had owned — that of honest brother ly 
 regard, and of a certain amount of reason in his 
 statement. 
 
 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 your- 
 self 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
 
 MILLER AXD BAKER. 249 
 
 private theatricals any day. I am not sure, 
 indeed, whether I am not better cut out for the 
 role 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 bona- 
 Jide 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
 
 250 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 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. 
 
 Harry and Horace Stanhope were the 
 grandsons of an impecunious English peer. 
 The boys, together with an only sister, had been 
 left orphans at an early age with small patri- 
 monies to fall back upon. The children's kin- 
 dred and guardians had been, as Harry repre- 
 sented them, a good deal at a loss what to do 
 with the lads in those hard times, where 
 slenderly-provided-for sprigs of the aristocracy 
 are concerned. It was far easier to deal with 
 the girl, the interest of whose portion would pay 
 the expenses of her education and furnish her 
 with dress and pocket-money at a modest 
 rate afterwards, while a childless aunt under- 
 took to give her a home and bring her out 
 in society until she attained her natural goal, a 
 suitable establishment. But not only were the 
 two lads destitute of any special ability which
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 251 
 
 should make up for their lack of fortune among 
 their compeers, one of the brothers, Horace, the 
 elder of the two, though he was always put 
 second to Harry, had started in life heavily 
 weighted in any race for worldly success. From 
 the effects of an illness in childhood in which 
 the infection was caught from his younger 
 brother, Horace had contracted a degree of 
 deafness, not enough to reduce him to an ear- 
 trumpet, but sufficient to put him at a serious dis- 
 advantage in the ordinary routine of school and 
 college, and in social intercourse. 
 
 The two brothers had always been insepar- 
 able ; but though they formed a marked instance 
 of fraternal alliance, they were as unlike in 
 person and character as devoted friends some- 
 times are. The very nicknames bestowed on 
 them at school and college, which burlesqued 
 their close association, referred as often to 
 the contrast as to the union between them. 
 They were dubbed not only ' Eomulus and
 
 252 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 Kemus,' and ' Hengist and Horsa,' but 'Valentine 
 and Orson/ and ' Day and Night,' or any other 
 couple of terms linked yet opposed to each 
 other, which schoolboy and undergraduate wits 
 could compass. Harry was a fair-haired, sun- 
 burned, comely young athlete, great in muscu- 
 lar development, the popular champion of boat- 
 races and cricket-fields, though he had not 
 reached the eminence of figuring in his univer- 
 sity's ' eight ' or ' eleven,' and so had been 
 denied the crowning glory of forming one of 
 the heroes in any spring or summer at Putney 
 or Lord's. He was so frank and cordial, so 
 honestly heedless of his own interests, no less 
 than those of his neighbours, that it was hard, 
 even for men as unlike him as Oliver Constable 
 was, to resist altogether the influence of Harry's 
 involuntary good fellowship when they happened 
 to come in contact with it. 
 
 Horace was sickly, sallow and stunted, with 
 a good deal of the captious testiness and jealous
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 253 
 
 moroseness which are said to distinguish un- 
 favourably the mass of the victims of deafness 
 from the bulk of their fellow-sufferers from 
 blindness. Horace Stanhope was as hard as 
 Harry was easy to get on with, and if left to 
 himself would have held aloof from his fellow- 
 creatures as sedulously as Harry cast himself 
 with a disarming confidence on their sympathy. 
 The single exception Horace made was in 
 favour of his brother, between whom and him- 
 self there had existed a strong attachment — 
 cemented by the curious attraction of extremes 
 — since the two young men were babies. 
 
 Harry saved his brother from utter isola- 
 tion. The silent saturnine lad, shut out by one 
 of the chief doors of the senses from joining 
 in much of human effort and enjoyment, 
 whether ' at kirk or market ' or by friends' 
 hearths, transferred his active share in the 
 struggle of life and in its joys and sorrows to 
 his brother, and vested and centred in Harry the
 
 254 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 main part of Horace's ambition, pleasure, and 
 pain, apart from what was purely physical. He 
 elected to live as it were vicariously, to take 
 his experience by proxy. In accordance with 
 this choice, wherever Harry went, Horace fol- 
 lowed at his heels. Harry's friends — and he 
 was pre-eminently a young man of many com- 
 rades — making them for good or for evil wher- 
 ever he went, Horace immediately adopted — 
 although they might be as unlike him as he was 
 unlike Harry — in Horace's silent, rather can- 
 tankerous fashion, which caused his friendship to 
 prove somewhat of an infliction to Harry's con- 
 genial associates. Whenever Horace shook 
 off the heavy fetters of his infirmity, and, in- 
 stead of being doggedly indifferent, showed 
 himself alert and interested, one might be sure 
 it was in something that concerned Harry. 
 
 The dedication of Horace's blighted life was 
 made mutely even with regard to himself, for 
 his was a nature as shy and reticent as it was
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 255 
 
 tenacious. And it was an undreamt of mystery 
 to Harry's transparent, unreflective disposition. 
 Harry had only an instinctive sense that poor 
 old Horry would be lost without him — Harry. 
 Why, his was the only voice which, while still 
 pitched in a natural key, Horry could dis- 
 tinguish without difficulty — and did not that 
 point plainly to the conclusion, insisted the 
 sapient Harry, that the two were meant to 
 hang out together ? No, no, a wife, though she 
 were ten*times a beauty and an heiress, could 
 not induce him to cut the connection. And the 
 advantage was not all on one side, Harry went 
 on to argue — for lie was generous in his youth- 
 ful flush of manliness — he himself was like one 
 of those little fellows who are put out in repeat- 
 ing their lessons, if the youngsters have not a 
 pet button to finger. Now, Horry was his but- 
 ton. Harry was convinced he could not get 
 a single inning at cricket, or play billiards save 
 like a muff — horrible misadventure ! — if he
 
 256 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 did not have Horry to look out, or mark for 
 him. 
 
 This was the pair whom Oliver Constable 
 brought to Fan's tea-table that summer after- 
 noon. 
 
 Fan received the strangers with very formal 
 courtesy, until Oliver mentioned them more 
 particularly as fellow-Oxonians, when she sud- 
 denly brightened all over and became gracious 
 to the tips of her fingers, and there was some- 
 thing specially flattering in Fan Constable's 
 earnest abandonment of graciousness. 
 
 Oliver groaned a little privately — going off 
 as he did on a wrong cue. All women were 
 led captive by good looks and winning tongues, 
 and Harry Stanhope was a bonnie, pleasant 
 boy enough to serve for the pair, to extend his 
 passport to yellow-skinned, turned-tempered 
 Horace. But Oliver would have thought that 
 Fan had more sense than to be carried away by 
 the eyes — granted that in measuring Harry
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 257 
 
 from head to foot, they found a sop for their 
 individual weakness in the fact that his whole 
 air and every movement, no less than his clothes 
 — rough and ill-used, from his battered wide- 
 awake to his muddy boots — belonged originally 
 to no farmer's ' cut,' but were the bearing and 
 dress of a better-born, better-bred man. 
 
 But all the same, Oliver comforted himself 
 with reckoning Fan would be thoroughly dis- 
 gusted when she learnt the young man's pre- 
 cious scheme. For if Oliver had wounded her 
 sense of propriety by sticking to their father's 
 trade from worthy motives, must she not be 
 scandalised outright by the Stanhopes' mean- 
 spirited desertion of their post and voluntary 
 abasement simply to save themselves from the 
 trouble of shaping a career and securing a pro- 
 vision for their wants in any other fashion ? 
 
 Oliver had not yet gauged the depths of 
 a woman's inconsistency. He found himself 
 twice deceived in his clever man's egregious 
 
 vol. i. s
 
 258 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 simplicity. When Fan was told the news that 
 the Stanhopes had become the tenants of Copley 
 Grange Farm, she grew radiant, and threw 
 herself into Harry's mad project with positive 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 Oliver looked on and listened with open- 
 eyed wonder. He had not objected altogether 
 to his sister's being won over to cordiality 
 towards the Stanhopes as his former associates. 
 He had noticed with ready approval how she 
 had set herself to entertain Horace — as most in 
 need of entertainment, taking pains to raise and 
 modulate her clear voice to suit his deafness, 
 and striving to find subjects which he might 
 care to discuss. It was the innate gentle- 
 woman showing itself in Fan as in all true 
 women of whatever rank, which caused her, in 
 the office of hostess, to select the guest who waa 
 least attractive and most apt to he neglected, 
 and to lavish on him her chief cares. Oliver 
 had admired the delicate consideration which
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 259 
 
 lay at the foundation of a lady's duty in this 
 respect. He had also appreciated the tact 
 which had helped Fan to discover soon that her 
 little attentions only bored Horace, since he 
 preferred to be let alone. The perception 
 caused Fan to turn and join in Oliver's conver- 
 sation with Harry. Then her brother was 
 amazed and certainly not edified to find that 
 Fan, in spite of her declared opinions, was 
 warmly applauding and even, as it seemed to 
 Oliver, proposing to back Harry Stanhope in 
 his enterprise. 4 Oliver will be so glad to have 
 you and your brother for neighbours ; ' she put 
 the sentiment quite gratuitously into Oliver's 
 mouth in his presence ; ' and if he or I — some- 
 times a woman's ideas are of some value where 
 housekeeping is concerned — can be of the least 
 service to you, we shall be very much pleased.' 
 Oliver could not believe his ears. It 
 was not that there was the least suspicion 
 of forwardness or indecorum in Fan's spon- 
 
 8 2
 
 260 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 taneous friendliness. The girl was perfectly- 
 incapable of such breaches of good taste. But 
 it was evident to anyone who knew her, that 
 Fan was interested and excited — to the extent of 
 being carried out of herself, in sheer sympathy 
 with an adventure, which any reasonable man 
 or woman might have held as certain to pro- 
 voke her contempt. 
 
 Sally Pope, coming in herself to remove the 
 tea-tray, in the accidental absence of another 
 servant, could not refrain from casting a ques- 
 tioning glance at Oliver. That appeal of Sally's 
 eyes said, ' Do you see Miss Fan ? She is 
 coming out of her shell for once in her life. 
 What makes her, that is so ill to please, so 
 rarely taken with what the talkative young 
 gentleman is saying ? ' 
 
 Indeed, Fan's ordinary quiet, reserved 
 manner in society was transformed as Oliver 
 had never seen it before to a stranger, though he 
 had always been aware that it masked an
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 261 
 
 ardent temperament. She was exclaiming 
 brightly, in answer to Harry's far from dis- 
 criminating praise of the mill-house parlour. 
 In fact the lad's satisfaction, though he was 
 guiltless of any intention to produce such an 
 impression, gave Oliver Constable the impres- 
 sion that the family sitting-room reminded 
 Harry, in a confused not disagreeable way, of 
 the parlour of one of those rural alehouses 
 which his pursuits had led him to frequent a 
 good deal. 
 
 6 I am so happy to hear you like this room,' 
 said Fan, ' because the parlour at Copley Grange 
 Farm ' (which any impartial person would 
 have pronounced greatly inferior in Oliver's 
 judgment, and which Fan had been in the 
 habit of holding in very low estimation) ' is just 
 such another homely, old-fashioned place. I 
 must believe they have their merits, since they 
 strike you favourably. You have always been 
 fond of a country life, you tell me ; then I think
 
 262 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 you will like being a farmer. Hay-making, of 
 course, is charming, and bean-hoeing is not bad 
 — to watch, at least. And you will take a deep 
 interest in your cattle and poultry, won't you ? ' 
 
 1 What has come over Fan,' was Oliver's 
 dumb protest. 'She never made hay in her 
 life. I did not suppose she condescended to 
 observe there was a species of pulse called 
 beans. As for ducks, she only considers them 
 in the light of furnishing dishes for the table. I 
 am convinced she has not looked into a duck's 
 nest, or fed the ducklings afterwards, since 
 she was herself a chick of five years old.' 
 
 In the meantime, in answer to Harrv Stan- 
 hope's fervent assurance that he luxuriated in 
 all country work and adored every kind of live 
 stock, Fan was saying, almost wistfully, she 
 appeared so anxious that he should not be dis- 
 appointed in his ridiculous experiment, ' And 
 you will not mind that you arc tenant instead of 
 landlord ? '
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 263 
 
 * Not a bit,' answered sanguine Harry, who 
 had not minded anything, save not getting his 
 play, since he was born. 
 
 Oliver was inclined to tax his sister with 
 insincerity and with indiscretion in pledging 
 them to support Harry Stanhope in his delu- 
 sion, the moment the visitors left. But before 
 he could begin, Fan, still in high spirits, took his 
 arm and walked him out to the garden. Half 
 of it was already in cold shadow, while in the 
 other half the long slanting rays of the sun were 
 kindling the low beds of pink saponaria into a 
 rosy red, shining through the blue cups of the 
 nemophila — warming them to the tone of the 
 summer sky, performing a fine process of silver- 
 ing on the white bells of the tall campanula. 
 
 c Isn't it jolly ? ' demanded Fan, taking the 
 first word, in her delight departing from her 
 correct Queen's English, which was generally 
 as perfect as Becky Sharp's French. ' To think 
 that two cf your old college friends should come
 
 264 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 and settle in this way on the very next farm 
 to us ! ' 
 
 Was it the simple rebound from the morti- 
 fication with which she had seen herself and 
 him turned back to the old vulgar, illiterate 
 circle of the tradespeople of Friarton, which 
 caused Fan to clutch at a straw, and induced 
 her to open her heart to the Stanhopes? 
 
 ' Nice ! ' growled Oliver. ' You are a nice 
 sensible young woman to think so. It will be 
 the greatest nuisance going. In the first place, 
 the Stanhopes are not friends of mine — don't 
 run off with that big blunder at starting. 
 They were once in a reading-party under my 
 charge — a beastly drag they proved, and we 
 nodded and exchanged a word or two in the 
 meadows or on the water from that time. 
 That is the head and tail of our friendship. 
 Nobody but Harry Stanhope would have made 
 a claim upon it.' 
 
 ' But you acknowledged the claim at your
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 265 
 
 own door,' said Fan, quickly ; ' and are you not 
 gratified by his turning farmer ? ' she added, 
 innocently. ' It is quite in your own way, and 
 I admit that in him it is romantic' 
 
 1 In my way ! ' cried Oliver, losing breath 
 at the injustice of the assertion ; ' in my way 
 to intrude where I am not wanted ! And you 
 to welcome romance ! You, w T ho boast you are 
 the most matter-of-fact girl, who defend the 
 commonplace ambition to rise in life, to cut 
 trade, to go in for a profession — which requires 
 a smattering of Greek and Latin, or a speaking 
 acquaintance with civil or ecclesiastical law, or 
 with drill and musketry — to wear a wig, or 
 a cassock, or a red coat — the last strictly 
 on parade — without the smallest title to 
 put on either — to dine at seven or eight 
 instead of one o'clock, and look down, with the 
 intense snobbery of a deserter from his ranks, 
 on the class of shopkeepers ! You, Fan, who 
 scout any ambition which has a wider scope
 
 266 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 and a less selfish aim, and call it either high- 
 flown or low-lifed, equally despicable in both 
 lights.' 
 
 4 But Mr. Stanhope is not proposing to be 
 a shopkeeper,' said Fan, with narrow literal- 
 ness ; ' and don't you know a gentleman, a 
 dozen generations deep, can do anything ? ' 
 she asserted, defiantly, gathering a cluster of 
 heliotrope and smelling it. 
 
 c It is the first time I ever heard such a 
 sublime dogma from the lips of anybody who 
 fell short of being an idiot or a scamp,' retorted 
 Oliver. 
 
 ' Oh ! my dear, dear boy, how can you be 
 so abominably rude? ' said Fan, driven to laugh 
 outright at his vehemence. 
 
 ' A gentleman's birthright must be worth 
 having,' snorted Oliver, still in towering indig- 
 nation. c It is a pity he does not improve the 
 advantage oftener by doing something which 
 deserves to be chronicled. And if he fails,
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 267 
 
 what can be expected from the canaille who 
 buy and sell ? ' 
 
 ' Oliver, don't pretend to misunderstand 
 me,' remonstrated Fan, relapsing quickly after 
 her short flight into her customary earnest- 
 ness — even with her proneness to feel aggrieved, 
 getting angry on her own account ; ' you know 
 very well what I mean.' 
 
 1 I defy anybody to arrive at the meaning 
 of so contradictory a person,' said Oliver,, 
 growing cool as she waxed hot, picking up a 
 stone and aiming it at an audacious sparrow 
 on a neighbouring bough. 
 
 'You are perfectly aware,' explained poor 
 Fan, with laborious iteration, 4 that I consider a 
 man who has had the education of a gentleman, 
 and lived in the society of gentlemen, is 
 qualified to belong to their rank if he will.' 
 
 ' Thanks ; I quite agree with you there ;. 
 we only differ in what constitutes a gentleman.' 
 
 ' Then let us agree to differ,' said Fan,.
 
 268 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 coming down from her stilts for the moment, 
 and making an overture towards reconciliation. 
 * Don't quarrel any more this evening. I really 
 want you to tell me if you think Clarke is 
 right in this border, for I can never make up 
 my mind.' 
 
 Oliver's opinion was at her service, as his 
 hands and feet would have been if she had 
 cared to employ them. And he agreed with 
 her that the dispute had gone far enough, 
 when it was assuming too sharp a tone. 
 
 That evening impressed itself on Oliver 
 Constable's mind, as certain clays and nights 
 which, in themselves, at the time, have offered 
 uo elements of distinction to arrest and excite 
 us, stand out through all our subsequent 
 histories. He could recall each incident and 
 feature afterwards. The fact that he w r as the 
 person to introduce the two Stanhopes at Fan's 
 tea-table, the characteristics and doings of 
 the little incongruous group which gathered in
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 269 
 
 the mill-house parlour — fair-haired, broad- 
 shouldered, sanguine Harry trotting out his 
 chimera ; dark, narrow-chested, melancholious 
 Horace leaning forward in the shadow to catch 
 Harry's words, and his alone, content in the 
 middle of his natural scepticism to accept and 
 act on Harry's version of their prospects ; Fan's- 
 rapid conversion to Harry's views and the effect 
 his influence had on her ; with Oliver himself 
 playing the part of a critical and condemnatory 
 chorus to the others. — all remained legibly 
 written on Oliver's memory. And the second 
 act in the garden was preserved to his con- 
 sciousness in the same involuntary manner. 
 He did not forget its smallest accessories — the 
 low sunk sun touching the beds and borders 
 with a final glory, and shining dazzlingly in 
 his eyes and Fan's, while she was unwontedly 
 gay, and he quenched her gaiety by his savage- 
 ness. Yet the two had ' fallen out ' and made 
 it up again, as even the most affectionate
 
 270 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 brothers and sisters will do, thousands of times 
 before, without the eircumstances making the 
 smallest mark on his mind. 
 
 Harry Stanhope was well accustomed to 
 find himself a favourite with women; and he 
 was of an age and temperament which inclined 
 him to repay the obligation impartially and 
 liberally. But there was a fascination to Harry, 
 little as he was accustomed to analysis, in the 
 manner in which Fan Constable's dignified 
 reserve melted at his approach into a pro- 
 portionate depth and wealth of cordiality. He 
 had a perception that the conquest of her 
 formal coldness was not a common occurrence, 
 and was flattering to his bearing and address. 
 And somehow the lad, with his volatile dis- 
 position, had a capacity which Oliver Constable 
 did not possess, of fathoming and rightly esti- 
 mating a woman's nature. Fan's brother, who 
 had known her all her life, might accuse her 
 most erroneously of changing like the wind ;
 
 MILLER AXD BAKER. 271 
 
 but the stranger, who had only known her an 
 hour, guessed, without being in fault, that stead- 
 fastness was the key-note to her character. 
 
 ' A famous acquisition Constable's turning 
 up at Friarton Mill will be to us,' Harry an- 
 nounced complacently, if brokenly, between 
 puffs of his pipe, when he and Horace trudged 
 over to such accommodation as had been im- 
 provised for them at their farm. 'We have 
 fallen on our feet. There is not only Constable, 
 an old acquaintance and a man to be trusted — 
 all the more that he is apt to be as crusty as 
 any governor's port — there is Miss Constable, 
 an awfully nice girl and thunderingly ladylike to 
 boot. Upon my word, Horry, if millers' 
 daughters are like that, I don't wonder at fellows 
 getting spoony and spouting verses about them, 
 and I do wonder at fine ladies holding their own. 
 What a pair of eyes she has got ! as dark a 
 brown as those of " Pin Him," ' naming with fond 
 regret the supreme pet of the host of dogs
 
 272 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 which had in their time called Harry master, 
 which, having passed away from earth to the 
 happy hunting ground of dogs, was farther 
 exalted in her late owner's fond imagination. It 
 was an immense compliment from Harry when he 
 compared Fan's eyes to the orbs of the departed 
 'Pin Him,' and when he added with pensive 
 meditativeness, ' I dare say she would prove 
 just such another little brick in standing by her 
 friends. How kind she was after the first ten 
 minutes ! ' 
 
 c I think Constable might have had the 
 hospitality to offer to put us up for the night 
 till the rest of our traps turned up,' objected 
 Horace, querulously. The poor fellow had an 
 unfortunate constitutional instinct by which he 
 invariably laid hold first of all the flaws in an 
 encounter, or an individual. ' The sister ain't 
 a bouncing, barn-door specimen of a woman 
 such as one might have expected from the sur- 
 roundings. But it struck me there was rather
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 273 
 
 too much starch and buckram about her, to 
 begin with, for good form — not to say the real 
 thing.' 
 
 ' Oh, come along, old Diogenes,' cried 
 Harry. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 274 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 Oliver's notion of good citizenship. 
 
 Oliver got into a habit of standing in his 
 shop-door, leaning against one or other of the 
 door-posts. He stood there to keep his weak- 
 nesses well in hand, as a declaration of war 
 against all promulgators of recognised theories 
 of gentility, and as a proclamation of fraternity 
 and equality to his brother-shopkeepers. If he 
 had known it, he was rather a striking figure 
 at the station he had chosen. He was a Saul 
 among the people. His shoulders were only 
 rounded by his own shrugs. His complexion 
 was fresh and slightly weather-beaten, neither 
 tanned into leather nor baked into paste, nor
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 275 
 
 faded into a girlish delicacy. His hands, when 
 he took them out of his pockets, were the un- 
 broadened, unflattened, well-kept hands of a 
 man who for a period of years has handled 
 books chiefly, and only plied an oar or a foil, 
 and carried a rod or a gun, by way of that 
 variety which has saved his fingers from be- 
 coming either slender or plump. His feet 
 showed the effect of contact with the wares of a 
 higher order of bootmaker than any known in 
 Friarton. The clothes Oliver had bought and 
 paid for from an Oxford tailor were not worn 
 out, and though he meant to replace them by 
 the work of a Friarton tailor in all its integrity, 
 it was not to be supposed that even then he 
 would be able to prevent an imitative towns- 
 man doiog his best to copy the University 'cut;* 
 so that Oliver, in spite of himself, would still 
 wear suits which were a faint reflection of the 
 coats of the disciples of Poole. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 Oliver was standing in this guise at his 
 shop-door the next time he saw the Stanhopes ; 
 and Harry called out again in the same tone of 
 cheerful curiosity, 'I say, Constable, what are 
 you about there ? ' 
 
 After his former experience, Oliver was 
 pleased to find that now he did not change 
 colour — by the ghost of a shade. He simply 
 moved a quarter of an inch to enable himself to 
 glance up at the sign above his head, and call 
 the Stanhopes' attention to it — especially to the 
 glittering spot where the Christian name 'Peter' 
 had been erased and replaced by ' Oliver.' 
 ' Was reading not included in your education ?' 
 he enquired, lazily. 
 
 It was Harry who grew red, gaped and 
 stopped short, while Horace looked sharply 
 from the sign to Harry to get his cue from his 
 prompter. ' Come, now,' stammered Harry, 
 taken aback as he was, and speaking out im- 
 pulsively according to his wont, 'this is too
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 277 
 
 much to make us cram. You don't mean to 
 say you're a ' 
 
 'A baker as well as a miller,' suggested 
 Oliver, with a laugh ; 'just so. I wish I could 
 say I was keeping shop — I am hardly good for 
 so much — but I'm looking after the premises 
 and my business in a general way.' 
 
 Harry stared, and then he swallowed the 
 camel at a gulp, bursting out into a laugh on 
 his own account as he accomplished the feat. 
 c All right, old fellow,' he took it upon him to 
 assure Oliver ; ' I grow the corn and you com- 
 plete the process, not merely by grinding it, but 
 by going a step farther and converting it into 
 food for man as well as for beast — why should 
 the service to the beast be regarded as more 
 honourable than that to the man ? As well 
 keep a shop here as a store in Adelaide or Vic- 
 toria. Look here, Constable, invite us in and 
 give us a tip of tarts.' 
 
 ' No,' said Oliver, ' my customers are the
 
 278 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 genuine article, and pay for what they get — all 
 save an exceptional small maid or man in rags, 
 who may be caught looking hungrily in at the 
 windows. Your coats are as good as mine, and 
 I'll swear you've had an excellent breakfast on 
 kidneys or mutton chops sufficient to spoil your 
 youthful appetite for tarts for some hours to 
 come. But I'll send one of my carts, in its 
 rounds, to call at the Farm and supply you with 
 bread, if you like to give me the order.' 
 
 ' And he expects us to say we are obliged 
 to him for proposing to furnish us with his 
 goods on his own terms, and on short credit, no 
 doubt! We'll see him hanged first, Horry. Is 
 there any other baker in the town, less of a 
 wretched screw, that we can favour with our 
 custom? though of course we shan't trust your 
 report. I'll tell you what, Constable, we'll run 
 handicaps — my corn against your bread.' 
 
 'You had better grow your crop first.' 
 
 8 Oh ! never fear.'
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 279 
 
 Oliver could not help being amused by 
 Harry Stanhope's manner of taking the dis- 
 covery. The older man was touched a little, 
 too, by the lad's staunchness to his new colours, 
 his honest if spasmodic efforts to accommodate 
 himself to a changed order of things, in direct 
 opposition to every standard and watchword of 
 the past, and to all the traditions of his youth. 
 
 Upon the whole the new-comers, Harry 
 Stanhope with Horace in his wake, behaved a 
 great deal better — Fan would have said in vindi- 
 cation of their birth and breeding — than nearly 
 the entire upper ten long resident in Friar ton, 
 on Oliver Constable's declining to avail himself 
 of their permission and his own power to join 
 their order. Harry received the shock, made 
 up his mind to it, and went on as if nothing had 
 happened, and everything was the same as be- 
 fore. If Constable chose to be a baker, of all 
 trades, let him. For that matter, who could 
 hinder him ? and what did it signify ? Harry
 
 280 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 took it fully for granted that Constable might 
 still preserve all the claims he had ever had to 
 being a gentleman. Certainly Harry had not 
 been in the habit of reckoning bakers gentle- 
 men, though he had known great brewers who 
 were granted the ' Open sesame ' by his people. 
 But he had enough modesty left to own he and 
 his people might have been mistaken in their 
 partial and arbitrary estimate. Unquestionably 
 it helped Harry greatly in his judgment to be 
 sensible that he himself continued a gentleman, 
 in spite of his idle talk of going down in the 
 social scale and sinking his coat of arms and all 
 ' the humbug ' of his former station, in the plain 
 style and title of Harry Stanhope, yeoman. 
 
 The Wrights and Fremantles of Friarton 
 said among themselves that Oliver Constable 
 had disappointed, nay, cheated them, in per- 
 mitting them to extend to him the right hand 
 of fellowship on false premises. True, he had 
 taken University honour> as had been predicted
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 281 
 
 of him, but he was about to degrade these 
 honours b} T sinking them in trade of the most 
 plebeian description. The fact was race, like 
 murder, would out. Young Constable came of 
 generations of millers and bakers, instead of 
 masters of grammar-schools and the like, and 
 he must perforce return to the hereditary 
 calling with its substantial profits. It had not 
 been in scholarship to save him from his natural 
 destiny. 
 
 Notwithstanding their just displeasure, 
 Oliver's old allies and patrons did not at once 
 give him the cut direct, to his face. As Mrs. 
 Hilliard had shrewdly defined the position, he 
 could not rid himself in a moment of the inde- 
 pendent fortune his father had left him, and of 
 his university training. His going into trade 
 might be a mere passing skit, like the freaks of 
 some other University men tinged with the 
 craze of doing something, at once out of the 
 common and communistic, which distinguished a
 
 282 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 few of the young scholars and geniuses of the 
 era ; or it might be a simple step to winding up 
 the business and getting rid of it ; or it might be 
 feeling Oliver's way to popularity with some 
 dim notion of getting into Parliament at a later 
 date. If so, though the fellow might be a 
 dreaming scheming fool for his pains, it would 
 be a totally different kind of folly, which society 
 could not afford to condemn severely. And a 
 mistake might be awkward. The Fremantles 
 and Co. could not be altogether sure of the 
 motive at work, and, like politic people, they 
 were disposed to temporise and refrain tor a 
 while from compromising themselves strongly. 
 In addition the Friarton magnates wondered a 
 little how Constable would get on, how he 
 would manage to combine qualifications which 
 the Wrights and Fremantles were accustomed 
 to consider far apart. In the dearth of sour* 
 of social interest and excitement, Oliver's for- 
 mer friends retained a great curiosity, in the
 
 MILLER AND BAKKR. 283 
 
 middle of their indignation and disgust, with 
 regard to his proceedings. Therefore ladies 
 and gentlemen greeted him in his new charac- 
 ter blandly at first, and even made half -jesting 
 allusions to his having become what the speakers 
 termed courteously a ' business man,' just 
 hinting that he would be a vara avis among 
 the common shopkeepers at Friarton. The 
 Wrights and Fremantles showed that it would 
 not be their fault if they did not drop young 
 Constable — supposing they were compelled to 
 drop him — by imperceptible degrees, and with 
 a gentle decorum and consideration both for 
 themselves and him. 
 
 But Oliver would not consent to be treated 
 as a spectacle for men and angels. When he 
 found he was to be smilingly stared at, pumped 
 dry, and rallied, he broke off, rashly perhaps, 
 his intercourse with his old masters, and Fan, 
 who had shown she was capable of bridling 
 her own pride and compelling it to go in
 
 284 OLIVER COXSTABLE, 
 
 harness, could not, in the middle of her mor- 
 tification, conquer her sore pride for Oliver 
 so as to make any effectual resistance to the 
 renunciation of their connection with profes- 
 sional and better-bred Friarton. Before Harry 
 Stanhope had appeared on the scene to change 
 the current of her ideas and reinspirit her, she 
 had given in gloomily to Oliver's determination 
 to decline the few and wary invitations extended 
 jointly to the brother and sister after Oliver's 
 return home, by the heads of the best houses in 
 Friarton. The would-be hosts and hostesses 
 took the unsatisfactory couple at their word 
 with a rapidity that savoured of relief. 
 
 ' The Constables know their own place best, 
 after all,' said the high contending faction 
 among themselves, with admirable candour. 
 ' We are not going to force them to continue 
 to come to our houses, when they may have 
 felt themselves not at home all the time,
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 285 
 
 though we did what we could to put these 
 young persons at their ease.' 
 
 ' Constable has grown up an awkward 
 brutally abrupt fellow, full of angles and 
 crotchets. He has nothing conciliatory about 
 him,' said Mr. Fremantle, who was himself 
 eminently gliding in his progress through the 
 world. ' I don't believe now, that he would 
 ever get over his original disadvantages — clever 
 as he undoubtedly is — in a different sphere. So, 
 no doubt, he judges wisely in falling back into 
 the old track, where he may be as rude and 
 overbearing as he likes. Probably we erred 
 in tempting him from it, though it seemed a 
 pity that talents like his should be wasted in a 
 mill and bakehouse.' 
 
 ' And you know, my dear,' said Mrs. Fre- 
 mantle, who was by temperament caressing, and 
 in the absence of other channels for her social 
 affectionateness, became necessarily the bosom
 
 280 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 friend of Mrs. Wright, though the two were 
 only sympathetic on class grounds, ' good 
 schools have not done every tiling for Miss 
 Constable.' 
 
 1 Yes,' answered Mrs. Wright. But in spite 
 of her assent she was a tiresome woman, in 
 doubt about everything, given to argue the 
 conclusiveness of the plainest proposition. Thus 
 she immediately turned and contended. ' But 
 they were excellent schools. The plain old 
 father, and the brother with more ambitious 
 views in those days, made a good selection. 
 Miss Constable was at a school at Norwood, 
 where my cousin Constantia's daughters went 
 afterwards, and she left it for Madame 
 Flechier's in Brussels, where Miss Hilliard's 
 nieces the Cholmondeley girls finished their 
 education. By the by,' added Mrs. Wright, in 
 fresh helpless uncertainty, ' they count some 
 relationship witli the Constables.' 
 
 ' In a slightly nearer degree than we all do
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 287 
 
 through Adam,' — Mrs. Fremantle put up her 
 chiu impatiently. ' Tt is only a whim of 
 darling Mrs. Hilliard's to acknowledge it. As 
 for Miss Constable ' — the lady took up the 
 broken thread of her discourse — ' she is so cold 
 and stiff, she has got into such a habit of re- 
 pressing herself — I suppose from having been 
 compelled to hold the other shopkeepers at 
 arm's length, it is a positive effort to maintain 
 an acquaintance with her ; and where is the 
 use, when she will never let herself out so that 
 one has no chance of knowing her any better ? 
 It would be cruel to tease the Constables 
 further by going on — trying to draw them away 
 from their old set, which is quite respectable 
 in its way. They may really be happier in it, 
 education or no education. We have given them 
 the opportunity of coming among us, and if we 
 do not suit them, there is no more to be said. 
 Of course we shall still be on bowing and 
 speaking terms, which may be a little awkward
 
 288 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 when it leads to nothing more — otherwise I 
 daresay it is all for the best.' 
 
 Fan writhed under what she guessed of this 
 result, and Oliver grinned at it. But neither of 
 the two did anything, after they had set the 
 ball moving, to prevent the catastrophe. 
 
 The single reservation in the sentence which 
 consigned the Constables once more to the 
 Coventry of vulgar allies, occurred in the case 
 of Mrs. Hilliard. Her house was, as in the 
 beginning, the neutral ground on which the 
 relapsed tradespeople could still encounter the 
 professional circle. Mrs. Hilliard had pro- 
 claimed her blood-relationship with the Con- 
 stables, while it was a point of honour with 
 her to assert openly her interest in the most 
 distant of her kindred. She announced now 
 with the greatest sang froid, and with a 
 suspicion of gratified mischief, in the line she 
 adopted — including as she did the culprits 
 among the recipients of the announcement —
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 28£> 
 
 that she did not mean to give Oliver and Fan 
 Constable up, neither did she mean them to 
 give her up, since there were two at making a 
 bargain and picking a quarrel. 
 
 It is putting it mildly to say that Fan did 
 not like Louisa Hilliard and objected to being 
 taken up by her, either on the score of remote 
 relationship or anything else ; but the girl could 
 not bring herself, even with her strong dislikes, 
 to reject the last refuge against finding herself 
 reduced solely to the society of the Dadds and 
 the Polleys. 
 
 Oliver rather enjoyed the broad tolerance 
 of Mrs. Hilliard's self-indulgent bonhomie, and 
 he had a hankering still after having the 
 entrance to the Meadows, though he availed 
 himself of it to his own hurt, smarting as he 
 did under the total absence of sympathy there, 
 even more so than at home, from another 
 Hilliard than Louisa. 
 
 Between Fan's passiveness and Oliver's 
 vol. i. u
 
 290 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 treacherous inclinations, the exception to the 
 social ban was admitted, and Mrs. Hilliard 
 carried her point triumphantly as usual. 
 
 The tradespeople of Friarton could not be 
 said to welcome with open arms Oliver Con- 
 stable's return to their shops and back parlours. 
 His old acquaintances had liked him better 
 than they had liked Fan, though he had been 
 of Fan's mind once on a day, and had looked 
 down from the giddy heights of juvenile 
 scholarship on the dull fat plains of trade, 
 vowing superciliously that he should never rest 
 in them. But, oddly enough, in proportion as 
 Oliver became a man and changed his mind, 
 his early friends learnt to distrust him more 
 and more. True, Oliver's recantation was 
 received with shouts from young Dadd, 
 chuckles from old Dadd, and giggles from the 
 Polley girls, as at a conquest won by their 
 class over that which pretended to be the 
 superior rank. But Oliver's outward ad-
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 291 
 
 lierence did not flatter his fellows out of their 
 rooted conviction that he was not one of them, 
 and might prove no better than a traitor in the 
 camp. He was ' a ehield ' preparing to come 
 among them, and take notes — not for the pur- 
 pose of printing the notes, which would have 
 been disloyal enough — but, what was far worse, 
 with the intention of gauging the moral and 
 intellectual condition of the shop people, and 
 with the conceited aspiration of elevating it. 
 And they had a strong objection to being 
 thus elevated by a wolf in sheep's clothing — old 
 Peter Constable's son spoilt by his own college 
 education. He was giving himself out as in- 
 tending to carry on his father's trade, which he 
 was safe to make a mess of, while he was 
 nourishing deep designs under the cloak of the 
 mill and the baker's shop. He to be a miller 
 and baker ! Old Dadd had heard Oliver could 
 read Greek like a parson, but he could no more 
 throw off a covering of pie crust than he could 
 
 TJ 2
 
 292 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 fly. Why, it was only the other day he was 
 walking up the High Street with his arm linked 
 in Freman tie's ! Fremantle might be as poor as 
 a church-mouse and only a better sort of school 
 usher, but he could read the lessons in his 
 white surplice on Sundays the same as the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury. Dadd went in for 
 chapel, not church, still even his minister 
 owned that Fremantle was a cut above him in 
 this world. And there was Mrs. Fremantle in 
 her shabby gown — that woman only acknow- 
 ledged the existence of such a female as Mrs, 
 Dadd in the shop. No doubt Mrs. Fremantle 
 was as gracious as could be over the counter,, 
 which was no less than her bounden duty, 
 seeing the length of time her bills stood in his 
 books, still, in the middle ofhergraciousness, she 
 managed to convey the impression that his — 
 Dadd's — better half was of a different order of 
 creation from that which had the honour of 
 claiming Mrs. Fremantle as its product. Well,
 
 MILLER AXD BAKER. 293 
 
 old Dadd, for his part, did not object. He was 
 aware that the Fremantles, for all their poverty 
 and shabbiness, dined at the squire's table when 
 he was at home, while Dadd and Mrs. Dadd 
 got no farther than the housekeeper's room ; 
 and neither did he wish to change places 
 with the schoolmaster and his lady in this 
 respect. But let fish be fish, and fowl fowl — 
 not ' 'alf and 'alf,' as Oliver Constable would 
 have them. 
 
 Mrs. Hilliard was not wrons? when she 
 judged from her own feelings the general dis- 
 agreeableness of being dragged up to breathe a 
 higher and purer atmosphere. 
 
 At the same time, as may have been seen, 
 the shop people, with their plain common sense 
 and shrewd wits — sharpened by jealousy, alarm, 
 and latent sluggish hostility — arrived more 
 quickly and surely at Oliver's eccentric, high- 
 flying views than the more cultivated portion 
 of the community puzzling over his meaning.
 
 294 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 Oliver Constable laid himself out to gain 
 old Dadd and induce his senior to look upon 
 him as a man and a brother. Oliver had 
 patience with the draper's ways, including the 
 loud stale jokes he poked at Oliver as to his 
 getting a wife and Fan's finding a husband. 
 According to Dadd's ideas, courtship in some 
 form was the one engrossing concern of all 
 young people — after the attention which the 
 young man was bound to pay to his trade and 
 the pleasure the girl might take in her smart 
 clothes and her outings, which, to be sure, were 
 adjuncts to the main business of her life. In- 
 deed Dadd looked charitably to a suitable 
 marriage for Oliver Constable as the most likely 
 cure for the lad's folly. Certainly young Dadd, 
 who was several years Oliver's senior, remained 
 a bachelor. But his father explained the con- 
 tradiction by rubbing his hands and accusing 
 Jack of being ' a sad dog ' among the ladies. 
 
 Jack blustered out, 'What nonsense, guv'ner I
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 295 
 
 Anyone might tell I had not much to say to 
 the girls by the looks of me,' clearly regarding 
 the charge as made out and as a feather in hia 
 cap. Even his mother, in her sleek demureness, 
 seemed to agree with him. 
 
 Oliver manfully stood the ' heavy teas ' un- 
 der which the Dadds' table groaned. He ate 
 gallantly the fat bacon and pickled salmon in 
 order that his entertainers, like John Gilpin's 
 neighbours, might not say he was proud. He 
 did not faint at the sight, or smell, of the raw 
 onions, to which the whole Dadd family were 
 partial. He did not throw down his arms 
 and fly when gin-and- water succeeded tea, and 
 added its contribution to the already salient 
 odours of the back parlour. Luckily, Oliver 
 had a good digestion and a robust constitution ; 
 and though the details had not to him the 
 fascination of novelty which they might have 
 possessed for Harry Stanhope, neither were 
 they the exaggerated offences which they had
 
 296 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 proved to Fan in her craving for outward 
 refinement. It goes without saying that Oliver 
 was free from the affected, effeminate horror of 
 the small pretender to gentility, the snob who, 
 having just cast his native coarse slough, has 
 wriggled himself into a new coat of superfine 
 delicacy and fastidiousness. Oliver rather re- 
 spected the Dadds for not altering their 
 ordinary style of hospitality out of compliment 
 to what they might imagine his changed habits 
 and tastes. 
 
 The Dadds' independence saved Oliver the 
 trouble — which worried him at the Polleys, of 
 having perpetually to rebut the attacks which 
 Mrs. Polley with her high spirit made on his 
 supposed conversion to fine living. Mrs. 
 Polley would not — any more than old Dadd — 
 deign to accommodate herself to Oliver Consta- 
 ble's presumed new standard, but she would 
 persist in bringing it up in the form of testy 
 apologies for the deprivations he had to suffer.
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 297 
 
 4 Of course, our teas aiu't like the meals vou've 
 been accustomed to, Mr. Oliver,' she always 
 began, exasperatingly. 'French cooks and a 
 dozen courses, I dare say, no less will serve you 
 now — I am sure I pity your sister — and your 
 choice of wines every day. All I can say for 
 our poached eggs and fried mackerel is they are 
 new laid and I know the hens as laid them, 
 while the fish is fresh and done to a turn, 
 though I say it that should not. They are 
 honest English dishes honestly come by and 
 paid for.' 
 
 Then the girls would giggle and protest. 
 ' Oh ! mother ! ' in chorus. And 'Mily, the 
 youngest and most forward of the sisters, would 
 toss her elaborately dressed head and cry, ' I 
 hope you are not hard to please, Mr. Oliver ; I 
 should never put myself about to cosset any 
 man. There ! ' 
 
 At last the poor creature the father, whose 
 wife had stood in the breach, and prevented
 
 298 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 him from dragging down the family to ruin, 
 would edge in his word and declare solemnly 
 — not without a timid attempt at pleasing his 
 mistress, who was not great enough to forget 
 what she had done for him — ' Missus Polley 
 never did go in for kickshaws or waste ; she 
 always was a one to prefer what was plain and 
 satisfying.' 
 
 In return for the tribute cast at her feet, 
 Mrs. Polley would look round with complacent 
 contempt, and charge her husband : ' You shut 
 up, Polley, and eat your victuals ; you know you 
 have a trick of keeping the table waiting. I 
 am glad none of the gals take after you, unless 
 it be Liza — soft thing ! Slow at meat is slow 
 at work. You may be thankful I never were a 
 dawdler, and that I went in — the greater fool I — 
 for looking after you.' 
 
 Whereupon poor Mr. Polley would subside 
 into silence and the munching of his food as 
 fast as his few teeth would go.
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 299' 
 
 And the girls would titter afresh and cry 
 again, ' Oh ! mother ! ' in another round of family 
 applause. Only Liza would protest against the 
 accusation of procrastination — particularly where 
 her favourite 'beverage' was in question. They 
 all knew, Liza said — almost as solemnly and 
 pompously as her father spoke — that she could 
 sip tea morning, noon, and night. There was 
 no substitute for it — unless lemonade. 
 
 ' Or beer — especially when Jack Dadd is 
 having a glass/ suggested 'Mily, flippantly. 
 
 The result of the impertinence was that the 
 two sisters began to dispute together with pain- 
 ful frankness and vigour as to which of them 
 paid least heed to Jack Dadd and his actions,, 
 till Mrs. Polley, who took and kept the high 
 constable tone in her family, called the noisy 
 pair to order, as it were, with a wave of her 
 truncheon, and an imperious, ' Be quiet, gals ! 
 Don't be two sillies putting up your backs 
 before Mr. Oliver.'
 
 300 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 But although Dadd the draper was brought 
 to discuss with Oliver, in the character of a 
 fellow-tradesman, the general principles of saL 
 profits, ready money discount, long credit, bad 
 debts, the danger of the co-operative system, 
 apprentices, journeymen, hours of closing and 
 holidays, the cautious veteran would no more 
 approach, in the course of conversation, his 
 individual practice in such debatable doings as 
 a percentage to the seller on each day's sales, 
 or with regard to so-called ' bankrupt storks,' 
 ' damaged goods,' ' clearing-off sales,' ' ready- 
 made work done on the premises,' than he would 
 have spoken of these trade mysteries to the 
 vicar, Mr. Houghton, or Dadd's own minister, 
 Mr. Holland. 
 
 Moreover, old Dadd would say ' sir ' in ad- 
 dressing his young fellow-townsman. Mrs. 
 Dadd was quite as mannerly, witli a certain 
 folding of the hands and falsetto tone of voice 
 which took the place of the twinkle in her hus-
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 301 
 
 band's eye and his sturdy accents, in their com- 
 mon politeness ; and so long as that small term 
 of half-ironical respect came in with eveiy alter- 
 nate sentence from the two, Oliver had scanty 
 hope of gaining ground with them. 
 
 Jack Dadd was not unwilling to be seen 
 walking along the High Street with Constable 
 of Friarton Mill, late of St. Bodolph's, Oxford 
 University, or standing with him at then- respec- 
 tive shop-doors. Jack went farther : he slapped 
 his old schoolfellow and brother-tradesman on 
 the shoulder at parting with a resounding 
 slap, which Oliver bore unflinchingly, though he 
 did not return it. The young draper addressed 
 the miller and baker as ' Noll,' in the hearing 
 of the Polley girls, and Oliver answered cheer- 
 fully the free abbreviation of his Christian name ; 
 yet, though Oliver was anxiously wary in his 
 intercourse with Jack, and scrupulously avoided 
 the most distant reference to printed matter which 
 was not in the ' Friarton News,' all the same,
 
 302 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 Jack had continually present to him his own 
 literary deficiencies, especially in the rudimentary 
 branches of grammar and spelling. What was 
 lacking in the last might have escaped detection 
 for the present, but the culprit had a guilty 
 conviction that Constable would somehow guess 
 that he — Jack — was never sure in writing a letter 
 when he ought or ought not to double his con- 
 sonants, or to introduce an e after a b or an 
 I or a t And Jack had an inward uncomfort- 
 able impression that a college swell must look 
 •down upon him for such a weakness ; even 
 though Constable might be a big enough 
 swell, or a sufficiently artfid dodger, not to 
 brandish his superior advantages in Jack's 
 
 face. 
 
 It is by no means pleasant to be haunted 
 by a sense of inferiority even in so small a 
 matter. And Jack Dadd was not accustomed 
 to submit to such an experience. 
 
 Till Oliver came home, Jack had swaggered
 
 MILLER AND B\KER. 303 
 
 and crowed a good deal over the young men 
 of his class in Friarton and the neighbourhood. 
 
 Old Dadd was well to do, and Jack was 
 an only child. Of course he was not like an 
 ordinary young man in the drapery line to 
 which he had been bred. He was the young 
 master and successor to a good business. 
 
 But now Jack Dadd began to fear that Oliver 
 Constable — queer fish and out of the water as 
 he was — would cut Jack out with some of his 
 most ardent admirers. In taking up his father's 
 trade Oliver had still retained his reputation 
 for wonderful cleverness and learning, above 
 all for that swell's tone of consideration, 
 tolerance, and gentleness which qualified Con- 
 stable's bluntest ways, and of which none had 
 a keener perception than poor Jack, who 
 lacked it utterly. Girls were so foolish and 
 vain, always caught by novelty and gen- 
 tility. No doubt Oliver Constable was not a 
 gentleman born, any more than the rest of
 
 304 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 them could boast of being lords' and squires' 
 sons. What was more, he had farther dimin- 
 ished his claims to being a gentleman by 
 choosing to work — at least to have a mill and 
 a bakehouse and shop, instead of to live idle 
 and take his pleasure out of the fortune old 
 Constable had left, as Jack felt certain he would 
 have done in Oliver's place. 
 
 Still, when all was said, Constable was the 
 nearest thing to a gentleman that would cross 
 the path of girls in Jack's circle, and Jack re- 
 flected the girls would make the most of Oliver, 
 and he would become the rage. 
 
 That goose Liza Polley, who pretended to 
 read collections of poetry, would be making a 
 hero of Constable, and that minx 'Mily would be 
 treating the fellow to some of her sauce. 
 
 Jack, on his part and speaking impartially, 
 was disappointed in Constable's abilities and 
 attainments. It was all very well to admit 
 that Oliver Constable had got a fine education 
 and had not become an insolent shaver on the
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 305 
 
 strength of it. Hang him ! he was too near 
 the real Mackay for that, But actually he did 
 not know anything worth caring about. He 
 could not put Jack up to a single wrinkle on 
 any point he was interested in, with regard to 
 which Constable had been in a position to have 
 become a valuable authority if he were not a 
 noodle in some respects. 
 
 Jack had sought to balance the effeminate 
 nature of his daily occupations in matching 
 skeins of silk and turning over gloves, by an 
 excess of manliness in his recreations. He went 
 in strongly for games and sport. He could not 
 often get away to attend a morning or an after- 
 noon cricket match, for his father had old- 
 fashioned strict notions of what was due to 
 business and business hours. Therefore Jack's 
 pink and white complexion lost the chance of 
 being tanned brown. But he played cricket 
 and bowls with a club of Friarton shopkeepers 
 every fine evening all the .summer. He took 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 306 OLIVER CONSTABLE, 
 
 in ' Bell's Life ; ' he kept a bull-terrier, and some- 
 times managed to engage it in a ratting match. 
 And he betted as regularly on the Derby and 
 the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race as if he 
 had driven more than once in his life to Epsom 
 Downs, wearing a green veil and scattering 
 flour on the way, or as if he had a hereditary 
 association with either University. 
 
 Jack found Oliver Constable, for all his so- 
 called attainments, lamentably behind him in 
 the important matters referred to. Oliver could 
 play cricket decently indeed, but he could do so 
 when he was a boy. And it was only by drag- 
 ging what information there was to get, word 
 by word, out of him, that a Friarton cricketer 
 could ascertain how the nobs at the University 
 played their game. Constable did not read a 
 sporting paper. He had not been in the habit 
 of betting, though he did not preach a sermon 
 against the practice, possibly he meant his silent 
 example to serve a* a text, Altogether, and this
 
 MILLER AND BAKER. 307 
 
 was a consolation, if he said as little to the girls 
 about the college spreads and blow-outs, he 
 might not take the wind out of Jack's sails to 
 the extent he had apprehended. But the defi- 
 ciency certainly rendered Oliver less of an 
 acquisition to his old acquaintances. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
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