“I’ll send it to you every morning!” cried the young man with elation.
He found them what Bessie thought excellent places under the great trees and beside the famous avenue the humours of which had been made familiar to the girl’s childhood by the pictures in Punch. The day was bright and warm and the crowd of riders and spectators, as well as the great procession of carriages, proportionately dense and many-coloured. The scene bore the stamp of the London social pressure at its highest, and it made our young woman think of more things than she could easily express to her companions. She sat silent, under her parasol, while her imagination, according to its wont, kept pace with the deep strong tide of the exhibition. Old impressions and preconceptions became living things before the show, and she found herself, amid the crowd of images, fitting a history to this person and a theory to that, and making a place for them all in her small private museum of types. But if she said little her sister on one side and Willie Woodley on the other delivered themselves in lively alternation.
“Look at that green dress with blue flounces. Quelle toilette!” said Mrs. Westgate.
“That’s the Marquis of Blackborough,” the young man was able to contribute—“the one in the queer white coat. I heard him speak the other night in the House of Lords; it was something about ramrods; he called them wamwods. He’s an awful swell.”
“Did you ever see anything like the way they’re pinned back?” Mrs. Westgate resumed. “They never know where to stop.”
“They do nothing but stop,” said Willie Woodley. “It prevents them from walking. Here comes a great celebrity—Lady Beatrice Bellevue. She’s awfully fast; see what little steps she takes.”
“Well, my dear,” Mrs. Westgate pursued to Bessie, “I hope you’re getting some ideas for your couturière?”
“I’m getting plenty of ideas,” said Bessie, “but I don’t know that my couturière would particularly appreciate them.”
Their companion presently perceived a mounted friend who drew up beside the barrier of the Row and beckoned to him. He went forward and the crowd of pedestrians closed about him, so that for some minutes he was hidden from sight. At last he reappeared, bringing a gentleman with him—a gentleman whom Bessie at first supposed to be his friend dismounted. But at a second glance she found herself looking at Lord Lambeth, who was shaking hands with her sister.
“I found him over there,” said Willie Woodley, “and I told him you were here.”