In broken gleams of dark-blue light,
The long array of helmets bright.
The long array of spears!”
“My word!” gasped Rex. “Wouldn’t you have given something to see it!”
“We’ll make it,” said Jean, delightedly. “Have a rest, Jo, and we’ll get the soldiers.”
Billy had played with soldiers since he was a very small boy, and it had been a hobby of his family’s to keep him supplied with fresh regiments. Out they came from their boxes: horse, foot, and artillery; ambulance-waggons, ammunition carts, and all the paraphernalia of battle.
“We can’t make it correctly, of course,” Jo said. “They didn’t have our weapons, and we don’t have their armour. But we can make a gorgeous and glittersome march; and you can just imagine that it’s all ancient Etruscan, just as you’ve got to imagine that that yellow ribbon is the Tiber, all muddy and foaming with flood-water, and that the match-boxes are really the great stone walls of Rome.”
Beyond doubt, it was a noble march. They headed across the plain towards Rome: Cavalry in the lead. Horse Guards and Life Guards, Lancers and Dragoons. They were brave with bright paint and glittering cuirasses, and with waving scarlet pennons. Then came guns, with teams of six horses, their officers galloping alongside; and there were machine-guns and other artillery, cunningly drawn by means of attaching a cavalryman to each with a scrap of flower-wire. It was hugely realistic. Then the “four-score thousand” came marching in solid formation: Highlanders and Fusiliers, men in khaki and men in scarlet coats, with banners here and there. There were officers standing in the empty ambulance-waggons, directing the march. Aeroplanes taxied on either side, loaded with men; the carts were full of bundles that were certainly ammunition and food. One mounted officer carried a splendid silken Union Jack, and near it a tiny model of a motor bore a seated soldier—once the driver of an ambulance-waggon. On one side of the car rode a Lifeguardsman; on the other, a rather undersized Cavalryman, one from a boxful which Billy, in his secret heart, despised, since neither in general splendour nor in correctness of detail did they come up to most of his army.
“Who are those fellows?” Rex asked; and Billy answered him, from the poem.
“ ‘Fast by the royal standard,