Phoebe turned to him in bitter tears, but the man’s head was down on his hands beside his plate and cup, and he, too, wept, with a pitiful childish squeak between his sobs.  Weakness so overwhelming and so unexpected—­a father’s sorrow manifested in this helpless feminine fashion—­tore the girl’s very heartstrings.  She knelt beside him and put her arms about him; but he pushed her away and with some return of self-control and sternness again bid her depart from him.  This Phoebe did, and there was silence, while Mr. Lyddon snuffled, steadied himself, wiped his face with a cotton handkerchief, and felt feebly for a pair of spectacles in his pocket.  Mr. Chapple, meantime, had made bold to scan the paper with round eyes, and Billy, now seeing the miller in some part recovered, essayed to comfort him.

“Theer, theer, maister, doan’t let this black come-along-o’t quench ’e quite.  That’s better!  You such a man o’ sense, tu!  ’T was awver-ordained by Providence, though a artful thing in a young gal; but women be such itemy twoads best o’ times—­stage-players by sex, they sez; an’ when love for a man be hid in ’em, gormed if they caan’t fox the God as made ’em!”

“Her to do it!  The unthankfulness, the cold cruelty of it!  An’ me that was mother an’ father both to her—­that did rock her cradle with these hands an’ wash the li’l year-auld body of her.  To forget all—­all she owed!  It cuts me that deep!”

“Deep as a wire into cheese, I lay.  An’ well it may; but han’t no new thing; you stablish yourself with that.  The ways o’ women ’s like—­’t was a sayin’ of Solomon I caan’t call home just this minute; but he knawed, you mind, none better.  He had his awn petticoat trouble, same as any other Christian man given to women.  What do ’e say, neighbour?”

Billy, of opinion that Mr. Chapple should assist him in this painful duty, put the last question to his rotund friend, but the other, for answer, rose and prepared to depart.

“I say,” he answered, “that I’d best go up-along and stop they chaps buildin’ the triumphant arch.  ‘Pears won’t be called for now.  An’ theer’s a tidy deal else to do likewise.  Folks was comin’ in from the Moor half a score o’ miles for this merry-makin’.”

“’T is a practical thought,” said Billy.  “Them as come from far be like to seem fules if nothin’ ‘s done.  You go up the village an’ I’ll follow ’e so quick as I can.”

Mr. Chapple thereupon withdrew and Billy turned to the miller.  Mr. Lyddon had wandered once and again up and down the kitchen, then fallen into his customary chair; and there he now sat, his elbows on his knees, his hands over his face.  He was overwhelmed; his tears hurt him physically and his head throbbed.  Twenty years seemed to have piled themselves upon his brow in as many minutes.