Nearer to us and facing them stood
a single grey figure; I looked hard, but could not make out
that it was Preston. Nearer still, stood with arms folded one
of those who the doctor had said were army officers; I
thought, the very one I had seen leave the hotel; but all like
statues, motionless and fixed. Only the band seemed to have
some life in them.
"What is it, Dr. Sandford?" I whispered, after a few minutes
of intense enjoyment.
"Don't know, Daisy."
"But what are they doing?"
"I don't know, Daisy."
I nestled down into silence again, listening, almost with a
doubt of my own senses, as the notes of the instruments
mingled with the summer breeze and filled the June sunshine.
The plain looked most beautiful, edged with trees on three
sides, and bounded to the east, in front of me, by a chain of
hills soft and wooded, which I afterwards found were beyond
the river. Near at hand, the order of military array, the
flash of a sword, the glitter of an epaulette, the glance of
red sashes here and there, the regularity of a perfect
machine.
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