CLAY
Irrelevant!
WETHERELL
And, of course, the immortal house-warming: a gift to the imaginations of all Englishmen forever. I am sorry I wasn't there myself.
CLAY
O that day! What a wonderful procession it must have been, from London Bridge to Whitehall, through what Evelyn, in his Diary, so beautifully calls "a lane of happy faces," and troops pressing to their lips the hilts of their weapons, and waving them overhead, in a unique salutation; the King, whom the Speaker of the House of Commons was about to address as King of Hearts, riding, on his thirtieth birthday, between his brothers of York and Gloucester, past the long waving of scarfs and glitter of rapiers, bowing to left and right, like a dark pine in the wind; the saddle-cloths of purple and gold, the salvos, the tears, "the ways strewn all with flowers, bells ringing, steeples hung with tapestries, fountains running with wine, trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking; and two hundred thousand horse and foot brandishing their swords, and shouting with inexpressible joy."
WETHERELL
Yes; joy with a bill of expenses. England clamored against the Judges, and for the King; and, like Saul, he came: tall, robust, keen, suave, comely, with the curse of retrogression behind him.
MRS. WETHERELL
Hear the magnificent phrases!