A small crowd was collected in front of the Hotel Mazarin, and its proportions were gradually being swelled by passing Saturday loungers. Walter Sedger's drag, drawn up in front of the hotel to receive his party for the races, was the attraction which drew together this inquisitive throng, and in spite of the expression of superior indifference assumed by most of the men and boys composing the crowd, it was easy to see that the red-wheeled coach, with its smart team of browns, was an object of more than passing interest. A park policeman was exchanging a word or two in a knowing manner with the stolid Briton in boots and breeches at the leaders' heads, and near him a slouch-hatted veteran, wearing a Grand Army badge, was talking condescendingly with an ice-man. A large cake of ice, which had been carried thus far on its way to the hotel bar, was slowly melting in the sun, and little streams of water flowed from it and trickled into the gutter; but the veteran and the ice-man still gazed at the shining panels of the drag, and eyed the "cattle" with the air of connoisseurs, while a butcher's boy with his white apron and basket of meat, and a German carpenter with his kit of tools, stood there stolidly, intent upon remaining until the show was over. A diminutive Italian boot-black, still attired in the rags of his native Naples, had crowded to the curb and was standing in front of two Norwegian sailors; just behind them was a party of Bohemian laborers, and a peddler from sunny Sicily touched elbows with a mortar-covered mason from Erin's shores, while some cadaverous clerks from the State Street shops, radiant in the ready-made attire of assumed gentility, were there, helping to swell this crowd of perhaps a hundred loungers. They were all citizen of the great Republic, and though few could speak intelligently the language of their adopted home, probably most of them, in their hearts, resented the appearance on the Chicago streets of this English coach as something unAmerican, for which "them doods" on the Avenue were responsible.
The hands of the hotel clock indicated that the hour was nearing two. The thin-faced veteran in the slouch hat plunged his hands deeper into his trousers' pockets, and, turning his head to a critical angle, said patronizingly to the ice-man: "Them's the things they calls 'tally-ho's.'" The ice-man rolled his shirt-sleeves a little higher above his elbows, folded his brawny arms and replied, in the accent of the Teuton, "I dink dot vas it."
"Them swells likes to show off mighty well. Wonder what that machine cost," answered the veteran. But before the ice-man could reply, a messenger boy at his side shouted out, "Golly! there goes another of them 'busses," and the attention of the crowd was attracted toward the street, where Jack Elliot's coach, with its team of roans, was passing along the Avenue, bearing a party to the races.
"I wish that chap in the white pants'd toot his horn," said the messenger boy; but Jack Elliot was a coaching man who did not believe in arousing the neighborhood with useless music, so the wish was not gratified.
While the attention of the crowd was thus diverted, Sedger and his friends emerged from the hotel. The party was composed of Marion and her husband, Florence Moreland, Harold Wainwright, a Mrs. Smith from Cincinnati, and Walter Sedger. They had been lunching in the restaurant of the hotel, and on reaching the sidewalk they at first found some difficulty in pushing their way toward the coach; but on seeing them the smart park policeman on duty officiously pushed the crowd back and made a way for them.
"I can't wait for Grahame any longer," Sedger was saying to Mrs. Sanderson. "He couldn't lunch with us, and I told him to be here at half-past one. It's a quarter to two, and we shall miss the first race."
"Don't wait for him, then," said Marion, thinking this was the only thing to be said, but feeling an inward disappointment at the thought that Duncan might not see her in her white crepon gown, with its gold corselet and braided trimmings, just sent her by Mrs. Mason of Burlington Street, London, W. She knew it was becoming, and she also liked her Virot hat, but she didn't think it wise to put Sedger in an ill-humor by asking him to wait, so she walked silently to where a groom was holding a ladder against the box-seat. Meanwhile Sedger passed round to his off side wheeler and picked up his reins. Assorting them in correct road fashion he mounted to his seat, wrapped a light driving apron about his legs, picked up his whip, caught the lash in a double thong, and waited while his party took their places. Marion mounted to the box seat and the rest took the longer seat behind. Just as Sedger was about to start his team, Marion, who had been constantly looking in the direction in which Duncan should appear, saw him hastening around the corner of Jackson Street. "There is Mr. Grahame," she called out, and while Duncan was hurrying along the street, Roswell Sanderson suggested that he and Wainwright had better change to the back seat, so as to give Duncan an opportunity of seeing something of the city.
Duncan came up almost breathless from his rapid walking, and after exchanging a hurried greeting with the party, mounted to the seat beside Florence left vacant by Harold Wainwright. "Let 'em go," Sedger called to the grooms. The lead bars rattled, the leaders pranced as the grooms jumped from their heads, the wheelers sprang into their collars, and the coach rolled off down the Avenue.
It was a bright June day, and all Chicago seemed to be in the long, tree-lined boulevard which stretched away to the south. Hundreds of vehicles of every description known to the coach-builder's craft were rolling over the hard macadam pavement, bearing people to the races, and in this motley array were to be found all sorts and conditions of men and carriages. Buggies and express wagons, stanhopes and butcher carts, mail-phaetons and road-carts, char-à-bancs and extension tops, victorias and "hacks," coaches and omnibuses, aristocracy and democracy scattered the same dust and rolled toward the same goal. Only the road to Epsom can present a scene more varied than this; only the Champs Élysées excels the noble avenue down which Walter Sedger tooled his team of browns.
"It is a pleasure to live on such a day, with four such horses to drive behind, isn't it, Mr. Grahame?" asked Florence, as the coach rolled past the Auditorium, and the team settled down to their work.