Ch. 5: Enter A Dragoon

I lately had a melancholy experience (said the gentleman who is
answerable for the truth of this story). It was that of going over a
doomed house with whose outside aspect I had long been familiar--a house,
that is, which by reason of age and dilapidation was to be pulled down
during the following week. Some of the thatch, brown and rotten as the
gills of old mushrooms, had, indeed, been removed before I walked over
the building. Seeing that it was only a very small house--which is
usually called a 'cottage-residence'--situated in a remote hamlet, and
that it was not more than a hundred years old, if so much, I was led to
think in my progress through the hollow rooms, with their cracked walls
and sloping floors, what an exceptional number of abrupt family incidents
had taken place therein--to reckon only those which had come to my own
knowledge. And no doubt there were many more of which I had never heard.

It stood at the top of a garden stretching down to the lane or street
that ran through a hermit-group of dwellings in Mellstock parish. From a
green gate at the lower entrance, over which the thorn hedge had been
shaped to an arch by constant clippings, a gravel path ascended between
the box edges of once trim raspberry, strawberry, and vegetable plots,
towards the front door. This was in colour an ancient and bleached green
that could be rubbed off with the finger, and it bore a small
long-featured brass knocker covered with verdigris in its crevices. For
some years before this eve of demolition the homestead had degenerated,
and been divided into two tenements to serve as cottages for farm
labourers; but in its prime it had indisputable claim to be considered
neat, pretty, and genteel.

The variety of incidents above alluded to was mainly owing to the nature
of the tenure, whereby the place had been occupied by families not quite
of the kind customary in such spots--people whose circumstances,
position, or antecedents were more or less of a critical happy-go-lucky
cast. And of these residents the family whose term comprised the story I
wish to relate was that of Mr. Jacob Paddock the market-gardener, who
dwelt there for some years with his wife and grown-up daughter.

I

An evident commotion was agitating the premises, which jerked busy sounds
across the front plot, resembling those of a disturbed hive. If a member
of the household appeared at the door it was with a countenance of
abstraction and concern.

Evening began to bend over the scene; and the other inhabitants of the
hamlet came out to draw water, their common well being in the public road
opposite the garden and house of the Paddocks. Having wound up their
bucketsfull respectively they lingered, and spoke significantly