‘Something more?’
‘Well, since you will make me speak, I mean the woman ought to love the man.’
The trumpet-major seemed to be less concerned about this than about her supposed superiority. ‘If it were all right on that point, would you mind the other?’ he asked, like a man who knows he is too persistent, yet who cannot be still.
‘How can I say, when I don’t know? What a pretty chip hat the elder princess wears?’
Her companion’s general disappointment extended over him almost to his lace and his plume. ‘Your mother said, you know, Miss Anne—’
‘Yes, that’s the worst of it,’ she said. ‘Let us go back to David; I have seen all I want to see, Mr. Loveday.’
The mass of the people had by this time noticed the Queen and princesses at the window, and raised a cheer, to which the ladies waved their embroidered handkerchiefs. Anne went back towards the pavement with her trumpet-major, whom all the girls envied her, so fine-looking a soldier was he; and not only for that, but because it was well known that he was not a soldier from necessity, but from patriotism, his father having repeatedly offered to set him up in business: his artistic taste in preferring a horse and uniform to a dirty, rumbling flour-mill was admired by all. She, too, had a very nice appearance in her best clothes as she walked along—the sarcenet hat, muslin shawl, and tight-sleeved gown being of the newest Overcombe fashion, that was only about a year old in the adjoining town, and in London three or four. She could not be harsh to Loveday and dismiss him curtly, for his musical pursuits had refined him, educated him, and made him quite poetical. To-day he had been particularly well-mannered and tender; so, instead of answering, ‘Never speak to me like this again,’ she merely put him off with a ‘Let us go back to David.’
When they reached the place where they had left him David was gone.
Anne was now positively vexed. ‘What shall I do?’ she said.
‘He’s only gone to drink the King’s health,’ said Loveday, who had privately given David the money for performing that operation. ‘Depend upon it, he’ll be back soon.’