All this was being said while they were scrambling with the rest of the world down to the auditorium to secure seats, for the grand afternoon had arrived, and people had been advised to be "in their seats as soon after one o'clock as they could make it convenient."
"How soon will that be, I wonder?" Marion said, quoting this sentence from Dr. Vincent's advice given in the morning, and holding up her watch to show that it was five minutes of one.
"It looks to me as though those deluded beings who arrive here at one o'clock will have several hours of patient waiting before they will make it convenient to secure seats. Just stand a minute, girls, and look! It is worth seeing. Away back, just as far as I can see, there is nothing but heads! The aisles are full, and space between the seats, and the office is full, and the people are just pouring down from the hill in a continuous stream. To look that way you wouldn't think that any had got down here yet!"
Now I really wish I had a photograph of that gathering of people to put right in here, on this page! Many of them would have looked much better at this point than they did after four hours of patient waiting. How that crowd did fidget and fix and change position, as far as it was possible to change, when there was not an inch of unoccupied space. How they talked and laughed and sang and grumbled and yawned, and sang again!
It was a tedious waiting. It had its irresistibly comic side. There were those among the Chautauqua girls who could see the comic side of things with very little trouble. The material out of which they made some of their fun might have appeared very meager to orderly, decorous people. But they made it.
What infinite sport they got out of the fidgety lady before them, who could not get herself and her three children seated to her mind! Those ladies who labored so industriously in order that the nation's flags, draping the stand, should float gracefully over the nation's chief, were an almost inexhaustible source of amusement to our girls.
"Look!" said Eurie, "that arrangement doesn't suit; some of the stars are hidden; see them twitch it; it will be down! Now that one has it looped just to her fancy. No! I declare, there it comes down again! The other one twitched it this time; they are not of the same mind. Girls, do look! It is fun to watch them; they work as though the interests of this meeting all turned on a right arrangement of that flag."
By this time the attention of the girls was engaged, and the number of witty remarks that were made at the expense of those flags would no doubt have disconcerted the earnest workers thereat could they have heard them.
The hours waned, and the president did not arrive. The waiters essayed to sing, but to lead such an army of people was a difficult task, especially when there was no one to lead. Such singing!
"We came out ahead, anyhow!" said Flossy, stopping to laugh.