While he was still posing, a mounted disorderly galloped on to the ground, shouting—
“Here, hi, hollo, you there! What’s yer name? How long d’ye mean to keep the king waiting?”
TAKEN ABACK.
In a moment all the herald’s dignity was gone. He trembled till his trouser-legs were fluttering all round him, like a cock’s feathers when he shakes himself, and cried—
“The king waiting! oh, oh dear!” gathered his trouser-legs about him, and fled through the gateway, like an old woman running in a shower of rain.
The trumpeters, thus relieved of the dread of the gilded bladder, blew a tremendous flourish, threw their trumpets in the air, and then the end one giving a back, they set off in leap-frog after the herald.
RACE-COURSE NOT COARSE.
DELICATE SHADE.
The boys made after them as fast as they could, soon outstripping them with their young legs, and on passing through the gate found the people assembled for the games. It was indeed a lovely sight. Unlike such gatherings among those who do not blunder, there were no thimble-riggers; no dismal niggers; no men with two black cards and a red; no shouts of four to one, bar one; no little girls with careworn faces and work-worn tights, faded and patched, performing on stilts to a consumptive drum and a time-defying flageolet; no display of paint, false hair, and falser smiles; no pouring in of sparkling gooseberry; no pouring out of wild and wicked words; no reeling and staggering; no shouting and brawling; no fingers in other people’s pockets, and fists in other people’s eyes. Such things are only to be witnessed in countries where the people have grown out of the condition of blundering, and have reached an advanced stage of civilisation and intelligence. Here in this yet unenlightened country things were quite different. The sight was lovely. The ladies and gentlemen whom the boys had seen before on the lawn, were here assembled, along with a host of other people of humbler rank, the rich costumes of the ladies and gentlemen contrasting with the less costly dresses of the lower classes, grouped as they were with the most charming harmony and accommodation of colours too beautiful for description, forming a sight never to be forgotten. The effect was made still more charming by the flowers that had sheltered the groups on the lawn being formed into a vast sun-shade above—a gigantic white lily, with its bell turned downwards, being the centre, and the circles going out from it in the most delicate gradations of colour through all the tints of the rainbow; the edges of this gigantic and gorgeous ombrelle being formed of enormous bright fern-leaves, the points of which, bending towards the ground, were by some unseen means kept gently waving, wafting the air charged with the fragrance of the flowers in delicious coolness over the whole assemblage.