But it was easier to think that she ought to marry the yeoman than to take steps for doing it; and she went on living just as before, only with a little more thoughtfulness in her eyes.
Two days after the visit to the camp, when she was again in the garden, Soldier Loveday said to her, at a distance of five rows of beans and a parsley-bed—
‘You have heard the news, Miss Garland?’
‘No,’ said Anne, without looking up from a book she was reading.
‘The King is coming to-morrow.’
‘The King?’ She looked up then.
‘Yes; to Gloucester Lodge; and he will pass this way. He can’t arrive till long past the middle of the night, if what they say is true, that he is timed to change horses at Woodyates Inn—between Mid and South Wessex—at twelve o’clock,’ continued Loveday, encouraged by her interest to cut off the parsley-bed from the distance between them.
Miller Loveday came round the corner of the house.
‘Have ye heard about the King coming, Miss Maidy Anne?’ he said.
Anne said that she had just heard of it; and the trumpet-major, who hardly welcomed his father at such a moment, explained what he knew of the matter.