Suddenly there spread into the firmament, from the direction of the down:—
‘Ra, ta, ta! Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta! Ra, ta, ta!’
‘O dear, dear! more hideous country sounds, I suppose?’ she inquired, with another start.
‘O no,’ said the miller cheerfully. ‘’Tis only my son John’s trumpeter chaps at the camp of dragoons just above us, a-blowing Mess, or Feed, or Picket, or some other of their vagaries. John will be much pleased to tell you the meaning on’t when he comes down. He’s trumpet-major, as you may know, ma’am.’
‘O yes; you mean Captain Loveday’s brother. Dear Bob has mentioned him.’
‘If you come round to Widow Garland’s side of the house, you can see the camp,’ said the miller.
‘Don’t force her; she’s tired with her long journey,’ said Mrs. Garland humanely, the widow having come out in the general wish to see Captain Bob’s choice. Indeed, they all behaved towards her as if she were a tender exotic, which their crude country manners might seriously injure.
She went into the house, accompanied by Mrs. Garland and her daughter; though before leaving Bob she managed to whisper in his ear, ‘Don’t tell them I came by waggon, will you, dear?’—a request which was quite needless, for Bob had long ago determined to keep that a dead secret; not because it was an uncommon mode of travel, but simply that it was hardly the usual conveyance for a gorgeous lady to her bridal.
As the men had a feeling that they would be superfluous indoors just at present, the miller assisted David in taking the horse round to the stables, Bob following, and leaving Matilda to the women. Indoors, Miss Johnson admired everything: the new parrots and marmosets, the black beams of the ceiling, the double-corner cupboard with the glass doors, through which gleamed the remainders of sundry china sets acquired by Bob’s mother in her housekeeping—two-handled sugar-basins, no-handled tea-cups, a tea-pot like a pagoda, and a cream-jug in the form of a spotted cow. This sociability in their visitor was returned by Mrs. Garland and Anne; and Miss Johnson’s pleasing habit of partly dying whenever she heard any unusual bark or bellow added to her piquancy in their eyes. But conversation, as such, was naturally at first of a nervous, tentative kind, in which, as in the works of some minor poets, the sense was considerably led by the sound.
‘You get the sea-breezes here, no doubt?’