of informing her mother that she had been
running like a doe to escape the interesting heir-presumptive alluded to,
merely said 'Mother, I don't like this at all.'

IX. ANNE IS KINDLY FETCHED BY THE TRUMPET-MAJOR

After this, Anne would on no account walk in the direction of the hall
for fear of another encounter with young Derriman. In the course of a
few days it was told in the village that the old farmer had actually gone
for a week's holiday and change of air to the Royal watering-place near
at hand, at the instance of his nephew Festus. This was a wonderful
thing to hear of Uncle Benjy, who had not slept outside the walls of
Oxwell Hall for many a long year before; and Anne well imagined what
extraordinary pressure must have been put upon him to induce him to take
such a step. She pictured his unhappiness at the bustling
watering-place, and hoped no harm would come to him.

She spent much of her time indoors or in the garden, hearing little of
the camp movements beyond the periodical Ta-ta-ta-taa of the trumpeters
sounding their various ingenious calls for watch-setting, stables, feed,
boot-and-saddle, parade, and so on, which made her think how clever her
friend the trumpet-major must be to teach his pupils to play those pretty
little tunes so well.

On the third morning after Uncle Benjy's departure, she was disturbed as
usual while dressing by the tramp of the troops down the slope to the
mill-pond, and during the now familiar stamping and splashing which
followed there sounded upon the glass of the window a slight smack, which
might have been caused by a whip or switch. She listened more
particularly, and it was repeated.

As John Loveday was the only dragoon likely to be aware that she slept in
that particular apartment, she imagined the signal to come from him,
though wondering that he should venture upon such a freak of familiarity.

Wrapping herself up in a red cloak, she went to the window, gently drew
up a corner of the curtain, and peeped out, as she had done many times
before. Nobody who was not quite close beneath her window could see her
face; but as it happened, somebody was close. The soldiers whose
floundering Anne had heard were not Loveday's dragoons, but a troop of
the York Hussars, quite oblivious of her existence. They had passed on
out of the water, and instead of them there sat Festus Derriman alone on
his horse, and in plain clothes, the water reaching up to the animal'