The Trumpet-Major by Thomas Hardy

Anne was so flurried by the military incidents attending her return home / that she was almost afraid to venture alone outside her mother's / premises. Moreover, the numerous soldiers, regular and otherwise, that / haunted Overcombe and its neighbourhood, were getting better acquainted / with the villagers, and the result was that they were always standing at / garden gates, walking in the orchards, or sitting gossiping just within / cottage doors, with the bowls of their tobacco-pipes thrust outside for / politeness' sake, that they might not defile the air of the household. / Being gentlemen of a gallant and most affectionate nature, they naturally / turned their heads and smiled if a pretty girl passed by, which was / rather disconcerting to the latter if she were unused to society. Every / belle in the village soon had a lover, and when the belles were all / allotted those who scarcely deserved that title had their turn, many of / the soldiers being not at all particular about half-an-inch of nose more / or less, a trifling deficiency of teeth, or a larger crop of freckles / than is customary in the Saxon race. Thus, with one and another, / courtship began to be practised in Overcombe on rather a large scale, and / the dispossessed young men who had been born in the place were left to / take their walks alone, where, instead of studying the works of nature, / they meditated gross outrages on the brave men who had been so good as to / visit their village.

Anne watched these romantic proceedings from her window with much / interest, and when she saw how triumphantly other handsome girls of the / neighbourhood walked by on the gorgeous arms of Lieutenant Knockheelmann, / Cornet Flitzenhart, and Captain Klaspenkissen, of the thrilling York / Hussars, who swore the most picturesque foreign oaths, and had a / wonderful sort of estate or property called the Vaterland in their / country across the sea, she was filled with a sense of her own / loneliness. It made her think of things which she tried to forget, and / to look into a little drawer at something soft and brown that lay in a / curl there, wrapped in paper. At last she could bear it no longer, and / went downstairs.

'Where are you going? ' said Mrs. Garland.

'To see the folks, because I am so gloomy!'

'Certainly not at present, Anne.'

'Why not, mother? ' said Anne, blushing with an indefinite sense of being / very wicked.

'Because you must not. I have been going to tell you several times not / to go into the street at this time of day. Why not walk in the morning? / There's young Mr. Derriman would be glad to -- '

'Don't mention him, mother, don't!'

'Well then, dear, walk in the garden.'

So poor Anne, who really had not the slightest wish to throw her heart / away upon a soldier, but merely wanted to displace old thoughts by new, / turned into the inner garden from day to day, and passed a good many / hours there, the pleasant birds singing to her, and the delightful / butterflies alighting on her hat, and the horrid ants running up her / stockings.

This garden was undivided from Loveday's, the two having originally 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.