iginally been
the single garden of the whole house. It was a quaint old place,
enclosed by a thorn hedge so shapely and dense from incessant clipping
that the mill-boy could walk along the top without sinking in--a feat
which he often performed as a means of filling out his day's work. The
soil within was of that intense fat blackness which is only seen after a
century of constant cultivation. The paths were grassed over, so that
people came and went upon them without being heard. The grass harboured
slugs, and on this account the miller was going to replace it by gravel
as soon as he had time; but as he had said this for thirty years without
doing it, the grass and the slugs seemed likely to remain.

The miller's man attended to Mrs. Garland's piece of the garden as well
as to the larger portion, digging, planting, and weeding indifferently in
both, the miller observing with reason that it was not worth while for a
helpless widow lady to hire a man for her little plot when his man,
working alongside, could tend it without much addition to his labour. The
two households were on this account even more closely united in the
garden than within the mill. Out there they were almost one family, and
they talked from plot to plot with a zest and animation which Mrs.
Garland could never have anticipated when she first removed thither after
her husband's death.

The lower half of the garden, farthest from the road, was the most snug
and sheltered part of this snug and sheltered enclosure, and it was well
watered as the land of Lot. Three small brooks, about a yard wide, ran
with a tinkling sound from side to side between the plots, crossing the
path under wood slabs laid as bridges, and passing out of the garden
through little tunnels in the hedge. The brooks were so far overhung at
their brinks by grass and garden produce that, had it not been for their
perpetual babbling, few would have noticed that they were there. This
was where Anne liked best to linger when her excursions became restricted
to her own premises; and in a spot of the garden not far removed the
trumpet-major loved to linger also.

Having by virtue of his office no stable duty to perform, he came down
from the camp to the mill almost every day; and Anne, finding that he
adroitly walked and sat in his father's portion of the garden whenever
she did so in the other half, could not help smiling and speaking to him.
So his epaulettes and blue jacket, and