'am?'

Mrs. Garland said Anne was quite well. 'She is grown-up now. She will
be down in a moment.'

There was a slight noise of military heels without the door, at which the
trumpet-major went and put his head outside, and said, 'All right--coming
in a minute,' when voices in the darkness replied, 'No hurry.'

'More friends?' said Mrs. Garland.

'O, it is only Buck and Jones come to fetch me,' said the soldier. 'Shall
I ask 'em in a minute, Mrs Garland, ma'am?'

'O yes,' said the lady; and the two interesting forms of Trumpeter Buck
and Saddler-sergeant Jones then came forward in the most friendly manner;
whereupon other steps were heard without, and it was discovered that
Sergeant-master-tailor Brett and Farrier-extraordinary Johnson were
outside, having come to fetch Messrs. Buck and Jones, as Buck and Jones
had come to fetch the trumpet-major.

As there seemed a possibility of Mrs. Garland's small passage being
choked up with human figures personally unknown to her, she was relieved
to hear Anne coming downstairs.

'Here's my little girl,' said Mrs. Garland, and the trumpet-major looked
with a sort of awe upon the muslin apparition who came forward, and stood
quite dumb before her. Anne recognized him as the trooper she had seen
from her window, and welcomed him kindly. There was something in his
honest face which made her feel instantly at home with him.

At this frankness of manner Loveday--who was not a ladies' man--blushed,
and made some alteration in his bodily posture, began a sentence which
had no end, and showed quite a boy's embarrassment. Recovering himself,
he politely offered his arm, which Anne took with a very pretty grace. He
conducted her through his comrades, who glued themselves perpendicularly
to the wall to let her pass, and then they went out of the door, her
mother following with the miller, and supported by the body of troopers,
the latter walking with the usual cavalry gait, as if their thighs were
rather too long for them. Thus they crossed the threshold of the mill-
house and up the passage, the paving of which was worn into a gutter by
the ebb and flow of feet that had been going on there ever since Tudor
times.

IV. WHO WERE PRESENT AT THE MILLER'S LITTLE ENTERTAINMENT

When the group entered the presence of the company a lull in the
conversation was caused by the sight of new visitors, and (of course) by
the charm of Anne's appearance; until the old men, who ha