The Trumpet-Major by Thomas Hardy

The next morning Miss Garland awoke with an impression that something / more than usual was going on, and she recognized as soon as she could / clearly reason that the proceedings, whatever they might be, lay not far / away from her bedroom window. The sounds were chiefly those of pickaxes / and shovels. Anne got up, and, lifting the corner of the curtain about / an inch, peeped out.

A number of soldiers were busily engaged in making a zigzag path down the / incline from the camp to the river-head at the back of the house, and / judging from the quantity of work already got through they must have / begun very early. Squads of men were working at several equidistant / points in the proposed pathway, and by the time that Anne had dressed / herself each section of the length had been connected with those above / and below it, so that a continuous and easy track was formed from the / crest of the down to the bottom of the steep.

The down rested on a bed of solid chalk, and the surface exposed by the / roadmakers formed a white ribbon, serpenting from top to bottom.

Then the relays of working soldiers all disappeared, and, not long after, / a troop of dragoons in watering order rode forward at the top and began / to wind down the new path. They came lower and closer, and at last were / immediately beneath her window, gathering themselves up on the space by / the mill-pond. A number of the horses entered it at the shallow part, / drinking and splashing and tossing about. Perhaps as many as thirty, / half of them with riders on their backs, were in the water at one time; / the thirsty animals drank, stamped, flounced, and drank again, letting / the clear, cool water dribble luxuriously from their mouths. Miller / Loveday was looking on from over his garden hedge, and many admiring / villagers were gathered around.

Gazing up higher, Anne saw other troops descending by the new road from / the camp, those which had already been to the pond making room for these / by withdrawing along the village lane and returning to the top by a / circuitous route.

Suddenly the miller exclaimed, as in fulfilment of expectation, 'Ah, / John, my boy; good morning! ' And the reply of 'Morning, father,' came / from a well-mounted soldier near him, who did not, however, form one of / the watering party. Anne could not see his face very clearly, but she / had no doubt that this was John Loveday.

There were tones in the voice which reminded her of old times, those of / her very infancy, when Johnny Loveday had been top boy in the village / school, and had wanted to learn painting of her father. The deeps and / shallows of the mill-pond being better known to him than to any other man / in the camp, he had apparently come down on that account, and was / cautioning some of the horsemen against riding too far in towards the / mill-head.

Since her childhood and his enlistment Anne had seen him only once, and / then but casually, when he was home on a short furlough. His figure was / not much changed from what it had been; but the many sunrises and sunsets / which had passed since that day, developing her from a comparative child / to womanhood, had abstracted some of his angularities, reddened his skin, / and given him a foreign look. It was interesting to see what years of / training and service had done for this man. Few would have supposed that / the white and the blue coats of miller and soldier covered the forms of / father and son.

Before 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.