the last troop of dragoons rode off they were welcomed in a body by Miller Loveday, who still stood in his outer garden, this being a plot lying below the mill-tail, and stretching to the water-side.  It was just the time of year when cherries are ripe, and hang in clusters under their dark leaves.  While the troopers loitered on their horses, and chatted to the miller across the stream, he gathered bunches of the fruit, and held them up over the garden hedge for the acceptance of anybody who would have them; whereupon the soldiers rode into the water to where it had washed holes in the garden bank, and, reining their horses there, caught the cherries in their forage-caps, or received bunches of them on the ends of their switches, with the dignified laugh that became martial men when stooping to slightly boyish amusement.  It was a cheerful, careless, unpremeditated half-hour, which returned like the scent of a flower to the memories of some of those who enjoyed it, even at a distance of many years after, when they lay wounded and weak in foreign lands.

Then dragoons and horses wheeled off as the others had done; and troops of the German Legion next came down and entered in panoramic procession the space below Anne’s eyes, as if on purpose to gratify her.  These were notable by their mustachios, and queues wound tightly with brown ribbon to the level of their broad shoulder-blades.  They were charmed, as the others had been, by the head and neck of Miss Garland in the little square window overlooking the scene of operations, and saluted her with devoted foreign civility, and in such overwhelming numbers that the modest girl suddenly withdrew herself into the room, and had a private blush between the chest of drawers and the washing-stand.

When she came downstairs her mother said, ‘I have been thinking what I ought to wear to Miller Loveday’s to-night.’

‘To Miller Loveday’s?’ said Anne.

‘Yes.  The party is to-night.  He has been in here this morning to tell me that he has seen his son, and they have fixed this evening.’

‘Do you think we ought to go, mother?’ said Anne slowly, and looking at the smaller features of the window-flowers.

‘Why not?’ said Mrs. Garland.

‘He will only have men there except ourselves, will he?  And shall we be right to go alone among ’em?’

Anne had not recovered from the ardent gaze of the gallant York Hussars, whose voices reached her even now in converse with Loveday.

‘La, Anne, how proud you are!’ said Widow Garland.  ‘Why, isn’t he our nearest neighbour and our landlord? and don’t he always fetch our faggots from the wood, and keep us in vegetables for next to nothing?’

‘That’s true,’ said Anne.

‘Well, we can’t be distant with the man.  And if the enemy land next autumn, as everybody says they will, we shall have quite to depend upon the miller’s waggon and horses.  He’s our only friend.’

‘Yes, so he is,’ said Anne.  ‘And you had better go, mother; and I’ll stay at home.  They will be all men; and I don’t like going.’

Mrs. Garland reflected.  ‘Well, if you don’t want to go, I don’t,’ she said.  ‘Perhaps, as you are growing up, it would be better to stay at home this time.  Your father was a professional man, certainly.’  Having spoken as a mother, she sighed as a woman.

‘Why do you sigh, mother?’

‘You are so prim and stiff about everything.’

‘Very well—we’ll go.’

‘O no—I am not sure that we ought.  I did not promise, and there will be no trouble in keeping away.’

Anne apparently did not feel certain of her own opinion, and, instead of supporting or contradicting, looked thoughtfully down, and abstractedly brought her hands together on her bosom, till her fingers met tip to tip.

As the day advanced the young woman and her mother became aware that great preparations were in progress in the miller’s wing of the house.  The partitioning between the Lovedays and the Garlands was not very thorough, consisting in many cases of a simple screwing up of the doors in the dividing walls; and thus when the mill began any new performances they proclaimed themselves at once in the more private dwelling.  The smell of Miller Loveday’s pipe came down Mrs. Garland’s chimney of an evening with the greatest regularity.  Every time that he poked his fire they knew from the vehemence or deliberateness of the blows the precise state of his mind; and when he wound his clock on Sunday nights the whirr of that monitor reminded the widow to wind hers.  This transit of noises was most perfect where Loveday’s lobby adjoined Mrs. Garland’s pantry; and Anne, who was occupied for some time in the latter apartment, enjoyed the privilege of hearing the visitors arrive and of catching stray sounds and words without the connecting phrases that made them entertaining, to judge from the laughter they evoked.  The arrivals passed through the house and went into the garden, where they had tea in a large summer-house, an occasional blink of bright colour, through the foliage, being all that was visible of the assembly from Mrs. Garland’s windows.  When it grew dusk they all could be heard coming indoors to finish the evening in the parlour.

Then there was an intensified continuation of the above-mentioned signs of enjoyment, talkings and haw-haws, runnings upstairs and runnings down, a slamming of doors and a clinking of cups and glasses; till the proudest adjoining tenant without friends on his own side of the partition might have been tempted to wish for entrance to that merry dwelling, if only to know the cause of these fluctuations of hilarity, and to see if the guests were really so numerous, and the observations so very amusing as they seemed.

The stagnation of life on the Garland side of the party-wall began to have a very gloomy effect by the contrast.  When, about half-past nine o’clock, one of these tantalizing bursts of gaiety had resounded for a longer time than usual, Anne said, ‘I believe, mother, that you are wishing you had gone.’

‘I own to feeling that it would have been very cheerful if we had joined in,’ said Mrs. Garland, in a hankering tone.  ‘I was rather too nice in listening to you and not going.  The parson never calls upon us except in his spiritual capacity.  Old Derriman is hardly genteel; and there’s nobody left to speak to.  Lonely people must accept what company they can get.’

‘Or do without it altogether.’

‘That’s not natural, Anne; and I am surprised to hear a young woman like you say such a thing.  Nature will not be stifled in that way. . . .’  (Song and powerful chorus heard through partition.)  ‘I declare the room on the other side of the wall seems quite a paradise compared with this.’

‘Mother, you are quite a girl,’ said Anne in slightly superior accents.  ‘Go in and join them by all means.’

‘O no—not now,’ said her mother, resignedly shaking her head.  ‘It is too late now.  We ought to have taken advantage of the invitation.  They would look hard at me as a poor mortal who had no real business there, and the miller would say, with his broad smile, “Ah, you be obliged to come round.”’

While the sociable and unaspiring Mrs. Garland continued thus to pass the evening in two places, her body in her own house and her mind in the miller’s, somebody knocked at the door, and directly after the elder Loveday himself was admitted to the room.  He was dressed in a suit between grand and gay, which he used for such occasions as the present, and his blue coat, yellow and red waistcoat with the three lower buttons unfastened, steel-buckled shoes and speckled stockings, became him very well in Mrs. Martha Garland’s eyes.

‘Your servant, ma’am,’ said the miller, adopting as a matter of propriety the raised standard of politeness required by his higher costume.  ‘Now, begging your pardon, I can’t hae this.  ’Tis