Give him a bowl of hot milk, and some bread."
Chapter 21: Back in Harness.
"You must have had a bad time of it." the miller said, as he
watched Rupert eating his breakfast. "I don't know that I ever saw
anyone so white as you are, and yet you look strong, too."
"I am strong," Rupert said, "but I had an attack, and all my colour
went. It will come back again soon, but I am only just out. You
don't want a man, do you? I am strong and willing. I don't want to
beg my way to the army, and I am ashamed of my clothes. There will
be no fighting till the spring. I don't want high pay, just my food
and enough to get me a suit of rough clothes, and to keep me in
bread and cheese as I go back."
"From what part of France do you come?" the miller asked. "You
don't speak French as people do hereabouts."
"I come from Brittany," Rupert said; "but I learnt to speak the
Paris dialect there, and have almost forgotten my own, I have been
so long away."
"Well, I will speak to my wife," the miller said. "Our last hand
went away three months since, and all the able-bodied men have been
sent to the army. So I can do with you if my wife likes you."
The miller's wife again came and inspected the wanderer, and
declared that if he were not so white he would be well enough, but
that such a colour did not seem natural.
Rupert answered her that it would soon go, and offered that if, at
the end of a week, he did not begin to show signs of colour coming,
he would give up the job.
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