"Have the police been here?" asked Edward. "Where are they now?"
"Gorn off to git some more. Lor lumme! it ain't 'arf a circus, is it?"
The opulent-looking overfed ladies and gentlemen around us seemed more amused than impressed with what was going on. But Edward's face was very grave. "Poor creatures!" he said aside to me. "They are hardly capable of taking anything seriously. They lead such terrible lives that anything is a distraction to them. When a chance of emancipation comes, they are too sunk in misery to take it."
They did not appear to me to be precisely sunk in misery, and but for their fine clothes and the smart-looking equipages in which they had arrived, and which were now gathered round the gates waiting to take them away again, they were exactly like a careless, rather noisy London crowd, come out to see some fun.
As Edward was speaking there was a shout, and, looking up at a sort of Florentine balcony stuck on to a crenellated tower, I saw the now notorious Mr. Bolster, standing with his arms folded, surveying the crowd. He was in shirt-sleeves, and had not brushed his hair. Possibly he had thrown all the brushes in the house at the conservatories.
The crowd cheered him, and he bowed repeatedly with an air of self-satisfaction, but presently held up his hand to command silence, and then made a short speech.
"Fellow men and fellow women," he said. "I've begun, and now it's for you to carry on. Down with servants! Down with luckshry! Down with the pore!"
The renewed cheers with which this stirring address was received caused Edward's eyes to brighten. "Their hearts are in the right place," he said. "They only want a leader." Then he raised his voice and shouted: "Three cheers for Bolster and his noble wife!"
The cheers were given, and Mrs. Bolster, attired in what I believe is called a peignoir, appeared by the side of her husband and acknowledged them with him. Then both of them retired from the balcony.