While this cheerful line of prognostication was being followed up beyond her ken, Tilly Ann sat bolt upright in her father’s arms, looking round her with a proprietary air, and occasionally patting his cheek with a broad dimpled little palm.  She was a tall, well-made child, plump and fair, with rosy cheeks and sturdy limbs that would in themselves have given the lie to any dismal croakings; it was no wonder that “daddy’s” eyes perpetually rested on her with a glow of pride.

“And she were quite a little ’un when ye did last see her, weren’t she, Corporal?” said some one. (In Branston the good folk were punctilious with regard to titles.) “Ye’d scarce ha’ knowed her I d’ ’low if ye’d met her on the road.”

“Know her,” said Corporal Baverstock, “I’d know her among a thousand!  ’Tis what I did write to my mother.  Says I, ’I’d pick her out anywheres, if ‘twas only by the dimple in her chin.’”

The bystanders nodded at each other; they remembered that particular letter well, and had much appreciated the phrase in question.

“To be sure, Corporal, so ye did, so ye did.  And the maid have a dimple sure enough.  There, ’tis plain for all folks to see.”

Tilly Ann turned up her little face, and her father kissed the cleft chin with sudden passion.  Then he tossed her up in his arms and laughed.

“Many a time I’ve a-thought o’ that dimple,” he observed, in rather an unsteady voice, “and wondered if I’d ever set eyes on it again.”

“And look at her curls,” said a woman admiringly.  “They be a-sheenin’ like gold to-day.  She thinks a deal o’ they curls, don’t ’ee, Tilly?  If anybody axed her for one she’d al’ays say she was a-savin’ on ’em up for daddy—­didn’t ’ee, Tilly?”

Tilly Ann, overcome with coyness, buried her face in her father’s shoulder, and giggled, wriggling her little fat body the while, and drumming on his side with her lace-up boots.

“Hold hard there!” cried he.  “Them boots of yourn be so bad as a pom-pom.  Come, we must be lookin’ up the wold lady.  Say Ta-ta, and we’ll be off.”

One blue eye peeped out shyly from beneath the forest of curls, one little sunburnt hand was waved comprehensively; a smothered voice uttered the necessary “Ta-ta,” with an accompaniment of chuckles and wriggles, and the soldier, clasping his burden more tightly, and nodding laughingly right and left made his way towards home.

No one, looking at Mrs. Baverstock as she stood at her doorway in her neat black stuff gown, the sleeves of which were decently drawn down to her very wrists, would have guessed at the magnitude of the culinary labours in which she had been employed.  The beef was now done to a turn, the “spuds” boiled to a nicety; she had made pastry of the most solid description, which was even now simmering in the oven—­I use the word “simmering” advisedly, for in the generosity of her heart she had not spared the dripping.  The tea was brewed, hot and strong, the teapot, singed by long use, standing on the hob.  There was a crusty loaf, a pat of butter indented in the middle with one of Dick’s regimental buttons, and a plate of cakes, hard as the nether—­millstone and very crumbly, having been purchased from the distant town at the beginning of the week in expectation of this auspicious day.