No one moved.
The magistrate then took off his hat, and, looking intently into the crown of it, proceeded to read the Riot Act, which he had printed on the lining. He gabbled through his duty with a meaninglessness born of frequent repetition.
When he had ended, the crowd laughed. But it was an ugly laugh, with the sough of a winter storm through it.
Fitzgerald, swift to recognize the temper of a mob, and loth to begin a conflict which, once started, no man might say how it would end, glanced hastily round him.
His eyes were attracted by an unexpected sight, and remained fixed. Round the corner of the road furthest from the station came a pair of horse's ears, and they were decked with orange lilies.
A big man standing opposite Fitzgerald in the crowd, the centre of a group of men in dark-blue jerseys, who looked like fishermen, followed the direction of his gaze, and exclaimed,—
'Troth, I wudn't be the man what's behin' them orange lilies for somethin'. The boys will tear him limb from limb.'
Slowly the ears lengthened into the shape of a fat cob, foreshortened by the turn, which paced sleepily along regardless of the throng; he drooped his head, overcome by the noon-day heat, and shook it from time to time at the flies, with a rattle of his bit. Behind the cob came a small phaeton, and in the phaeton was sitting a young girl; she carried a knot of orange ribbons on her whip, and in her breast a cluster of the lilies.
As the girl drove deliberately forward, she flashed indignant glances from side to side. Abreast of her, along the face of the rows, there wavered a ripple, as though each man had a mind to hide himself behind his neighbor's back.
'Holy Mother! it's Miss Kitty,' ejaculated the big man.