“No, I don’t believe he would,” acknowledged Jane. “He’d be too generous. But we’d have deserved it, Kit, and I’d much rather be here with things the way they are now. It’s comfortable to my insides somewhere. Do you suppose the lady in the pink tights will be in the percession?”
“She may be in the percession, but she won’t have on the pink tights. She has to save them for the tent, where it’s nice and clean. Outdoors they’d fade or get dusty, or she might fall off her horse into a puddle and spoil ’em.”
“Oh, Kit, she’d never fall off her horse! She can ride too well. Just think of the things she does in the pictures!”
“Huh! I know a boy at school that saw a lady fall off her horse—right in the circus ring, too. It hurt her awfully. Broke her back or something. Wish I’d seen it.”
“Oh, dear, I’m glad I wasn’t there,” exclaimed Jane, who had no thirst for the horrible.
“Hullo, I guess they’re comin’,” cried Christopher. “See how the people are yelling and clapping down by the post-office. I say, grandfather, they’re coming, they’re coming! Hooray!”
Christopher tried to see his grandfather, not by turning around but by looking out of his window, across the space of wall and in at the next window where grandfather and grandmother were sitting. He lost his balance, of course, and nothing but Jane’s sudden grasp at the loosest part of his trousers, and the special providence that protects small boys, saved him from tumbling down upon the crowd below. He lost both his bags in a wild clutch at the window ledge and drew himself back, sputtering and red-faced with disappointment. He looked down to watch a group of small street urchins scrambling for their contents.
“Pshaw, Jane, why didn’t you catch the bags?” he exclaimed in disgust.
Then he straddled the window sill and forgot all about his lost goodies in excitement, for the procession was really coming. It was not a very wonderful display. Indeed, the grown-ups thought it rather melancholy. There were half a dozen tired looking men on tired looking horses, half a dozen others dressed up as Indians, also on horseback, several cages of wild animals and a brassy brass band in a gilded chariot drawn by four horses. This band headed the procession and was the grandest thing in it except one other gilt chariot upon which a plump, pretty young woman in a Diana sort of costume sat enthroned. She rode just behind the wild-animal cages and Jane gazed after her enthralled until she passed out of sight.
“I am sure she is the lady who wears the pink tights and does such wonders on horseback,” she confided to Christopher. “Wasn’t she lovely?”