I was never happier when I was a boy than when I was with Mrs. Butts
at the mill, which George had inherited. There was a grand freedom
in her house. The front door leading into the garden was always
open. There was no precise separation between the house and the
mill. The business and the dwelling-place were mixed up together,
and covered with flour. Mr. Butts was in the habit of walking out of
his mill into the living-room every now and then, and never dreamed
when one o'clock came that it was necessary for him to change his
floury coat before he had his dinner. His cap he also often
retained, and in any weather, not extraordinarily cold, he sat in his
shirtsleeves. The garden was large and half-wild. A man from the
mill, if work was slack, gave a day to it now and then, but it was
not trimmed and raked and combed like the other gardens in the town.
It was full of gooseberry trees, and I was permitted to eat the
gooseberries without stint. The mill-life, too, was inexpressibly
attractive--the dark chamber with the great, green, dripping wheel in
it, so awfully mysterious as the central life of the whole structure;
the machinery connected with the wheel--I knew not how; the hole
where the roach lay by the side of the mill-tail in the eddy; the
haunts of the water-rats which we used to hunt with Spot, the black
and tan terrier, and the still more exciting sport with the ferrets--
all this drew me down the lane perpetually.
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