er's sentiments were naturally so versatile that
they could not be depended on for two days together; but it did not occur
to her for the moment that a change had been helped on in the present
case by a romantic talk between Mrs. Garland and the miller. But Mrs.
Garland could not keep the secret long. She chatted gaily as she walked,
and before they had entered the house she said, 'What do you think Mr
Loveday has been saying to me, dear Anne?'

Anne did not know at all.

'Why, he has asked me to marry him.'

XI. OUR PEOPLE ARE AFFECTED BY THE PRESENCE OF ROYALTY

To explain the miller's sudden proposal it is only necessary to go back
to that moment when Anne, Festus, and Mrs. Garland were talking together
on the down. John Loveday had fallen behind so as not to interfere with
a meeting in which he was decidedly superfluous; and his father, who
guessed the trumpet-major's secret, watched his face as he stood. John's
face was sad, and his eyes followed Mrs. Garland's encouraging manner to
Festus in a way which plainly said that every parting of her lips was
tribulation to him. The miller loved his son as much as any miller or
private gentleman could do, and he was pained to see John's gloom at such
a trivial circumstance. So what did he resolve but to help John there
and then by precipitating a matter which, had he himself been the only
person concerned, he would have delayed for another six months.

He had long liked the society of his impulsive, tractable neighbour, Mrs.
Garland; had mentally taken her up and pondered her in connexion with the
question whether it would not be for the happiness of both if she were to
share his home, even though she was a little his superior in antecedents
and knowledge. In fact he loved her; not tragically, but to a very
creditable extent for his years; that is, next to his sons, Bob and John,
though he knew very well of that ploughed-ground appearance near the
corners of her once handsome eyes, and that the little depression in her
right cheek was not the lingering dimple it was poetically assumed to be,
but a result of the abstraction of some worn-out nether millstones within
the cheek by Rootle, the Budmouth man, who lived by such practices on the
heads of the elderly. But what of that, when he had lost two to each one
of hers, and exceeded her in age by some eight years! To do John a
service, then, he quickened his designs, and put the question to her
while the