As they passed down the long inclined street a baby with a shaved head, a baby that was half a baby and half an obi, tied behind in a stiff and preposterous bow, spied Campanula being borne aloft, dropped his immediate business—the attempt to fly a kite shaped like a moth—and followed the newcomers with a shout.
The shout, as if by magic, brought half a dozen children from nowhere in particular; girl children with dolls on their backs, older girl children with babies on their backs, boys battledore in hand, and all with clogs on their feet, clogs that went clipper-clapper, waking up the echoes and calling forth more children, so that when they had got half-way down the mile-long street from the upper village Campanula had a “following,” the like of which had never been seen, perhaps, since the pied piper passed through Hamelin.
A colored, laughing, murmuring, rippling throng following with every eye fixed on the Lost One borne sky-high on the shoulder of the tall stranger; a throng, the half of which could have walked under a dinner-table without much inconvenience; some empty-handed, some still grasping their implements of play, all agog, yet of decent and orderly behavior. A throng, in fact, of ladies and gentlemen in the making.
Backward over the summit of Leslie gazed Campanula upon this crowd, whilst the stall-keepers and the stray riksha men, the pilgrims and the paupers, the priest and the policeman, stood by the way to watch the procession pass.
“I say,” called Leslie to his companion, who was limping behind dead beat, yet in an agony at the “splurge” they were making, “this is gay, isn’t it?”
“Dod rot the child!” cried M’Gourley, nearly tumbling over a fat baby with a tufted head, who was running in front of him and trying to look up in his face.
“I dinna ken whoat ye mean by gay. I have no immeediate particular use for the waurd. Never before have I been held up to public reedicule. I’m a decent livin’ man, ye ken, an’ I ha’na any use for such gayeties. I leave them to ithers who care for makin’ assinine eediots of theirselves; but, thank the Laird, we’re nearly there noo.”
They turned a corner and entered a gate that led to a garden.
At the gate M’Gourley turned and addressed the camp followers, telling them with forced politeness that there was nothing more to be seen; that the show was over, in fact, and asking them honorably to excuse him the pleasure of being followed any more.
The crowd murmured, and dissolved, the earth seemed to take it up like blotting-paper, and M’Gourley, turning his back upon its remnants, led the way through the garden, past a tiny lake in the midst of which stood an island, inhabited by a huge frog, and so, by a path, to the front of a long, low, white-washed house.