" he bellowed to Perry Miller one day.
" Perry Miller turned around and a delightful missile, compounded of chewed paper and known as a "spit pill," flew across the room and struck Rhoda squarely in the170 face.
" "Perry Miller.
I might just as well talk of loving the miller who comes once a year to buy our corn.
Luke told me about it,—our old miller.
Then he turned toward the miller and said, with white rage, "You'll suffer for this, sir.
The miller himself, unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in that first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought of; and often in his conscious hours talked in a feeble, disjointed manner of plans he would carry out when he "got well.
And Mr Tulliver, you perceive, though nothing more than a superior miller and maltster, was as proud and obstinate as if he had been a very lofty personage, in whom such dispositions might be a source of that conspicuous, far-echoing tragedy, which sweeps the stage in regal robes, and makes the dullest chronicler sublime.
And as an extra touch of bitterness, the injured miller had recently, in borrowing the five hundred pounds, been obliged to carry a little business to Wakem's office on his own account.
That respectable miller and maltster had left Tom behind, and driven homeward in a state of great mental satisfaction.
"Ay, ay, Gritty," said the miller, with a new softness in his tone; "but I've allays done what I could for you," he added, as if vindicating himself from a reproach.
you'll make yourself giddy, an' tumble down i' the dirt," said Luke, the head miller, a tall, broad-shouldered man of forty, black-eyed and black-haired, subdued by a general mealiness, like an auricula.
Not," he added, with polite significance,—"not that a man can't be an excellent miller and farmer, and a shrewd, sensible fellow into the bargain, without much help from the schoolmaster.
The two years at th' academy 'ud ha' done well enough, if I'd meant to make a miller and farmer of him, for he's had a fine sight more schoolin' nor I ever got.
Strong was the miller.
"Gracie Miller?
" said Grace Miller.
Bob Tanner was there, and Johnny Miller, and Jeff Thatcher, when I said it.
Didn't Gracie Miller fall in the kitchen fire and burn herself terrible the very next Saturday?
By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with—and so on, and so on, hour after hour.
