Though nobody seemed to be looking on but the few at the window and
in the village street, there were, as a matter of fact, many eyes
converging upon that military arrival in its high and conspicuous
position, not to mention the glances of birds and other wild
creatures. Men in distant gardens, women in orchards and at
cottage-doors, shepherds on remote hills, turnip-hoers in blue-green
enclosures miles away, captains with spy-glasses out at sea, were
regarding the picture keenly. Those three or four thousand men of
one machine-like movement, some of them swashbucklers by nature;
others, doubtless, of a quiet shop-keeping disposition who had
inadvertently got into uniform--all of them had arrived from nobody
knew where, and hence were matter of great curiosity. They seemed
to the mere eye to belong to a different order of beings from those
who inhabited the valleys below. Apparently unconscious and
careless of what all the world was doing elsewhere, they remained
picturesquely engrossed in the business of making themselves a
habitation on the isolated spot which they had chosen.

Mrs. Garland was of a festive and sanguine turn of mind, a woman
soon set up and soon set down, and the coming of the regiments quite
excited her. She thought there was reason for putting on her best
cap, thought that perhaps there was not; that she would hurry on the
dinner and go out in the afternoon; then that she would, after all,
do nothing unusual, nor show any silly excitements whatever, since
they were unbecoming in a mother and a widow. Thus circumscribing
her intentions till she was toned down to an ordinary person of
forty, Mrs. Garland accompanied her daughter downstairs to dine,
saying, 'Presently we will call on Miller Loveday, and hear what he
thinks of it all.'