Bread and tea were had in the open air, with the seasoning of the June morning.  The stage coach rumbled off by the road it had come, bearing with it the two countrywomen, and leaving a pile of baggage for Chickaree.  The miller came down and set his mill agoing, excusing himself to his guests by saying that there was a good lot of corn to be ground and the people would be along for it.  So the mill became no longer a place of rest, and Miss Hazel and her guardian were driven out into the woods by the rumble and dust and jar of machinery.  Do what they would, it was a long morning to twelve o’clock; when the mill ceased its rumble and the miller went home to his dinner, and the weary and warm loiterers came back to the shade of the mill floor.  Then the sound of wheels was heard at last; the first that had broken the solitude that day; and presently at the mill door Rollo presented himself, looking as if sunshine agreed with him.  He shook hands with Mr. Falkirk, but gave Wych Hazel his old stately salutation.

‘I could not come sooner,’ he said.  ’I did my best; but it is thirty miles instead of twenty-five.  How was the night?’

‘Sadly oblivious and uneventful!’

’Mine wasn’t! for I was getting dinner for you in my dreams all night long.  Being dependent on other people’s resources, you see—­However, I had a good little friend to help me!’

‘What carriage have you brought for us, Rollo?’

’Dr. Maryland’s rockaway, sir; and the miller’s wagon for the trunks.  To get anything else would have made much more delay.  Is my friend Phoebe here?’

’She will be soon.  It is dinner-time in the mill.  What do you want, Mr. Rollo?’

‘Three words and a little assistance.’

He went off, and in a little while was back again, accompanied by Phoebe and plates and glasses; and the two went on to set forth the dinner, which he drew from a great basket that had come in the rockaway.  All this was done, and order given at the same time to other matters, with the light-handed promptitude and readiness of the bird-roasting of yesterday; Rollo assuring Wych Hazel between whiles that travelling was a very good thing, if you took enough of it.

’Thirty miles this morning, and thirty last night; and how many yesterday morning?—­A hundred, I should say, by my measurement.’

‘Rollo!—­What a dinner you have brought us!’ said Mr. Falkirk, who maintained a quiet and passive behaviour.

’You cannot set off for some hours yet, sir—­the horses must have rest.  I believe—­but am not sure—­that somebody got up very early this morning to make that pie.  I told them I had left some friends in distress; and Primrose and I—­did what we could.  I realized this morning what must be the position of a Commissary General on a rapid march.’

The provision on the board called for no excuses.  Rollo served everybody, even Mrs. Saddler, and afterwards dispensed strawberries of much larger growth than those of the day before.  He was the impersonation of gay activity as long as there was anything to do; and then he subsided into ease-taking.  The smoke of a cigar did not indeed offend Miss Kennedy’s mill-door; but in a luxurious position under a tree at some distance the sometime smoker settled himself with his sketch-book, and seemed to be comfortably busy at play, till it was time for moving.