The Drummers Coat | Page 3

women did more work in the fields in those days than in these; and now and again, when the booming of the mill-wheel ceased for a moment, the sound of the hones on the sickles could be heard clinking musically in the still heavy air. Two or three old women alone stood in their porches, with their sun-bonnets over their neat white caps, gossiping as they knitted, and speaking an occasional word to an old, old man who sat in a high-backed chair basking in the sun. The children were all down in the meadow below, the little maids mostly sitting in the shade and making nosegays of forget-me-nots; while every boy that could walk, and some of the maids also, were paddling in the little stream or dancing about the bank in chase of such unhappy fish as had been too lazy to leave the shallows when the stream was turned into the mill-leat. Sometimes they were silent, and the next moment they broke into chorus like a pack of hounds, while occasionally there came a shrill rate from one of the old women who watched them from the cottages, calling back some too venturesome boy from the deep water of the mill-leat.
So the old women gossiped and the children played, for the daily coaches up and down had passed some hours before, and there was little excitement to be looked for in the road after they were gone. Presently the old women stopped and listened, for they heard the gate at the lodge clang as it opened and shut, and two children's voices crying merrily, "Oh, corporal, corporal, put on your watering-cap!" Then one of the old women hastened, though with infirm steps, across her little garden towards the road, and stood by the edge of it among tall stalks of red valerian and a great plant of periwinkle which hung down over the wall. And there came along the road a tall man with grizzled hair, dressed in drab breeches and gaiters just like any other man, but wearing on his head a flat blue cap, widening out from brim to crown, with a yellow band round the forehead--the watering cap of a Light Dragoon. He walked very erect, though he limped slightly with one leg; and over one shoulder he carried a clean white stable-rubber, neatly folded, with a stable-halter tied across it. Hanging on to his hand on one side was a little boy of about nine years old with great brown eyes and glossy black hair, dressed in a very short little brown jacket with brown breeches buttoning on to it, and a broad white collar. On the Corporal's other side and clinging tight to his other hand skipped a little girl with wide blue eyes and fair hair, dressed all in white, and with her face almost hidden under a little white sun-bonnet. Both children carried a little wreath of laurel in their hands and seemed to have some very important business before them, until they caught sight of the old woman looking down upon them, when they cried out "Sally! Sally!" and letting go the Corporal's hand ran up the steep little steps to her, while the Corporal limped more slowly after them.
"Ah, my dear hearts," said old Sally, "I minded that it was Sallymanky day, and I said to myself that Master Dick and Miss Elsie would surely be coming in for the ribbins. Shall us go in to house and fetch mun? Then please to come in. Please to come right in, Mr. Brimacott," she added, addressing the Corporal. So they passed through the little low door into the cottage, and in two seconds the children were standing on chairs and examining all the treasures on the walls. For Sally had been a servant at Bracefort Hall, and was never so glad as when little Dick and Elsie Bracefort came to pay her a visit; first because she thought there was no family to equal the Braceforts in the whole wide world, and secondly, because these children had lost their father at Salamanca just eight years before to a day. And there were wonderful things on the walls, too. First and foremost there were two coloured pictures, one of France and Britannia joining hands, with a very woolly lamb and a very singular lion lying down together at their feet; and the other of Commerce and Plenty, represented as two very slender ladies with very short waists, loading Britannia with corn and fruit and flowers of the brightest colours. The children had heard Sally tell the story of them fifty times but were quite content to hear it again--how Sally had bought them of a hawker in the year 1802, for joy that peace was come at last, and how