most of us in which it seems to us that there will never be more
cakes and ale. George, however, talked of the children, and
reminded his father that in matters of business nothing is so
ruinous as ruin. 'If you've got to get your money out of a thing,
it should always be in working order,' he said. Michel acknowledged
the truth of the rule, but again declared that there was no money to
be got out of the thing. He yielded, however, and promised that the
repairs should be made. Then they went down to the mill, which was
going at that time. George, as he stood by and watched the man and
boy adjusting the logs to the cradle, and listened to the apparently
self-acting saw as it did its work, and observed the perfection of
the simple machinery which he himself had adjusted, and smelt the
sweet scent of the newly-made sawdust, and listened to the music of
the little stream, when, between whiles, the rattle of the mill
would cease for half a minute,--George, as he stood in silence,
looking at all this, listening to the sounds, smelling the perfume,
thinking how much sweeter it all was than the little room in which
Madame Faragon sat at Colmar, and in which it was, at any rate for
the present, his duty to submit his accounts to her, from time to
time,--resolved that he would at once make an effort. He knew his
father's temper well. Might it not be that though there should be a
quarrel for a time, everything would come right at last? As for
Adrian Urmand, George did not believe,--or told himself that he did
not believe,--that such a cur as he would suffer much because his
hopes of a bride were not fulfilled.

They stayed for an hour at the saw-mill, and Michel, in spite of all
that he had said about tobacco, smoked another pipe. While they
were there, George, though his mind was full of other matter,
continued to give his father practical advice about the business--