"I will go and find them," he said. "Don't be anxious about them. They will be in there—they will be all right. You will come too, won't you? I think I can manage to get you through."
"I can't," she replied. "I promised I would not stir from this place, and I must not, in case they should be in the street, or we should miss them."
"'The boy stood on the burning deck,'" he quoted, with a laugh. He could afford a little jest, though she was so serious, for he was happy in the conviction that the girls had been unable to reach the street, that he should find them disconsolate in the gardens, and compel Miss Patty to feel, if not to acknowledge, that he was of some use and comfort to her, after all. "But I hate to leave you here," he added, glaring upon her uncomfortable but inoffensive neighbours, "all alone by yourself."
"Oh, don't mind me," said Elizabeth, cheerfully. "If you can only find Patty and Nelly, and be so good as to take care of them, I shall be all right."
And so, with apparent reluctance, but the utmost real alacrity, he left her, flinging himself from the steps into the crowd like a swimmer diving into the sea, and she saw him disappear with an easy mind.
Then began the tramp of the procession, first in sections, then in imposing columns, with bands playing, and flags flying, and horses prancing, and the people shouting and cheering as it went by. There were the smart men of the Naval Reserve and the sailors of the warships—English and French, German and Italian, eight or nine hundred strong—with their merry buglers in the midst of them; and there were the troops of the military, with their music and accoutrements; and all the long procession of the trades' associations, and the fire brigades, with the drubbing of drums and the blare of trumpets and the shrill whistle of innumerable fifes accompanying their triumphal progress. And by-and-bye the boom of the saluting guns from the Prince's Bridge battery, and the seven carriages from Government House rolling slowly up the street and round the corner, with their dashing cavalry escort, amid the lusty cheers of Her Majesty's loyal subjects on the line of route assembled.
But long before the Queen's representative made his appearance upon the scene, Elizabeth had ceased to see or care for the great spectacle that she had been so anxious to witness. Moment by moment the crowd about her grew more dense and dogged, more pitilessly indifferent to the comfort of one another, more evidently minded that the fittest should survive in the fight for existence on the Treasury steps. Rough men pushed her forward and backward, and from side to side, treading on her feet, and tearing the stitches of her gown, and knocking her bonnet awry, until she felt bruised and sick with the buffetings that she got, and the keen consciousness of the indignity of her position. She could scarcely breathe for the pressure around her, though the breath of all sorts of unpleasant people was freely poured into her face. She would have struggled away and gone home—convinced of the comforting fact that Patty and Eleanor were safely out of it in Paul Brion's protection—but she could not stir an inch by her own volition. When she did stir it was by some violent propelling power in another person, and this was exercised presently in such a way as to completely overbalance her. A sudden wave of movement broke against a stout woman standing immediately behind her, and the stout woman, quite unintentionally, pushed her to the edge of the step, and flung her upon the shoulder of a brawny larrikin who had fought his way backwards and upwards into a position whence he could see the pageant of the street to his satisfaction. The larrikin half turned, struck her savagely in the breast with his elbow, demanding, with a roar and an oath, where she was a-shoving to; and between her two assailants, faint and frightened, she lost her footing, and all but fell headlong into the seething mass beneath her.
But as she was falling—a moment so agonising at the time, and so delightful to remember afterwards—some one caught her round the waist with a strong grip, and lifted her up, and set her safely on her feet again. It was a man who had been standing within a little distance of her, tall enough to overtop the crowd, and strong enough to maintain an upright position in it; she had noticed him for some time, and that he had seemed not seriously incommoded by the bustling and scuffling that rendered her so helpless; but she had not noticed his gradual approach to her side. Now, looking up with a little sob of relief, her instant recognition of him as a gentleman was followed by an instinctive identification of him as a sort of Cinderella's prince.
In short, there is no need to make a mystery of the matter. At half-past ten o'clock in the morning of the first of October in the year 1880, when she was plunged into the most wretched and terrifying circumstances of her life—at the instant when she was struck by the larrikin's elbow and felt herself about to be crushed under the feet of the crowd—Elizabeth King met her happy fate. She found that friend for whom, hungrily if unconsciously, her tender heart had longed.