The mill was a mile or so beyond the village on the bank of a pleasant little stream which furnished it with water power. It was built of logs mortared with mud, and grass grew in the chinks. It was a very small mill the single business of which was to grind corn into meal for the corn cakes of the neighborhood. When Judith and her father would drive up, everything would be silent; not a sign of life but the turning wheel and perhaps a chicken pecking along the path or a pigeon cooing from the roof.
"Hey, Dave! Hey, Dave!" Bill would call, as he tied the mules to the hitching post. Presently Dave Fields, the miller, would come hobbling down the path from his house which stood a few rods away hidden among locust trees. He was a shriveled little old man with one leg shorter than the other from rheumatism and a pair of merry blue eyes twinkling from under bushy white eyebrows.
"Waal, howdy, Bill. Purty weather we're a-havin' naow. Yer folks all smart?"
"Yaas, we keep middlin' smart. How's yo'se'f an' the woman, Dave?"
"Oh, we git about; we git about. But we hain't what we onct was, Bill. The woman had one o' them asthmy spells last week; an' my rheumatics keeps me purty stiff. But of course we're a-gittin' old. We can't complain. Haow much corn you got?"
"Oh, mebbe a couple o' bushel," Bill would answer, lifting the sack out of the wagon.
"Waal, Judy, an' hoaw're you a-feelin' to-day? You're a-growin' to be a great big gal. You'd best stop here with me an' mammy. We hain't got no little uns no more."
And the old miller would chuck the little girl under the chin good-naturedly, as she looked at him with wide, questioning eyes.
Then the mill would be put in operation and Judith would be fascinated by the sight of the golden meal pouring into the hopper.
When the corn was ground, the old man took a tenth for his share and put the rest back into Bill's sack. Then, but with no unseemly haste, the meal was lifted into the wagon and the mules untied and turned in the direction of home.
"Waal, Dave, you an' yer woman come over."
"Yaas, we'll be along by there some day. You come some Sunday an' stop all day with us."
And at last they would go rattling away up the hill toward Clayton.
Then to Peter Akers' general merchandise store to buy flour and sugar and coffee and a ten cent sack of candy for the children. There were always a few loungers here and even in midsummer they stood from force of habit about the tall, rusty, pot-bellied stove, spitting tobacco juice into the little sawdust yard which surrounded it. While her father made his purchases and passed the time of day with the loungers about the stove, Judith would walk about looking at the bright-patterned calicoes and chintzes ranged on the shelves, the shiny dippers and saucepans, the straw hats and piles of blue denim overalls, the brooms standing upside down in a round rack, the gleaming hoes and rakes and shovels with bright-painted handles. Around the walls just below the ceiling ran a frieze of galvanized washtubs and tin plated boilers. The showcase stood on the counter near the door, and Judith, having passed all the other things in review, would flatten the end of her small nose against the glass looking at pink and yellow cakes of scented soap, barber's pole sticks of candy, bottles of ink, silk ribbons, tooth brushes, pads of letter paper, alarm clocks, pocket combs, and sheets of tanglefoot fly paper, arranged much as they have been here enumerated. She never tired of doing this. To her the store was a vast emporium capable of satisfying every human need or whim. She rarely teased Bill to buy her a ribbon or a toy, partly because she knew that he needed the money for horseshoe nails and flour; and partly because there was nothing here that she really wanted very much for herself. She felt no acute need in her own life for any of the contents of the showcase; but she regarded them none the less with deep respect and admiration.