The old red mill had
been a landmark to him, and he had been used to pause by it, going and
coming, for a cheery greeting with its people as her little flaxen head
rose above the low mill-wicket, and her little rosy hands had held out a
bone or a crust to Patrasche. Now the dog looked wistfully at a closed
door, and the boy went on without pausing, with a pang at his heart, and
the child sat within with tears dropping slowly on the knitting to which
she was set on her little stool by the stove; and Baas Cogez, working
among his sacks and his mill-gear, would harden his will and say to
himself, "It is best so. The lad is all but a beggar, and full of idle,
dreaming fooleries. Who knows what mischief might not come of it in the
future?" So he was wise in his generation, and would not have the door
unbarred, except upon rare and formal occasions, which seemed to have
neither warmth nor mirth in them to the two children, who had been
accustomed so long to a daily gleeful, careless, happy interchange of
greeting, speech, and pastime, with no other watcher of their sports or
auditor of their fancies than Patrasche, sagely shaking the brazen bells
of his collar and responding with all a dog's swift sympathies to their
every change of mood.
All this while the little panel of pine wood remained over the chimney
in the mill-kitchen with the cuckoo clock and the waxen Calvary; and
sometimes it seemed to Nello a little hard that whilst his gift was
accepted he himself should be denied.
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