The spokesman turned to the Merediths. “We know’d the Fourth o’ July ain’t no joyous day to you-alls, so we’ve done our bestest to keep you from thinkin’ of it by bringin’ some one to call on you. Ain’t you glad to see again your old friend, Miss Shy Anna?”
As the speaker finished, he stepped to one side, bringing into view of the porch a woman seated upon the head of a barrel in the cart. A poor army drab, left behind in the evacuation, had been decked out in what Janice instantly recognised as her Mischianza costume; and with hair dressed so that it stood up not less than two feet above her forehead, splashed over with white paint, a drink-coloured face, doubly red in contrast, and bare feet, with an expanse of more than ankle in a similar nakedness below the trousers, she made up in all a figure so droll that under any other circumstances Janice would have laughed.
“We are escortin’ Miss Shy Anna—who ain’t really very shy—to see all her friends of The Blended Rose and of The Burning Mountain, an’ as we hate airs an’ pride, we demands that each give her a kiss. Just make a way for Miss Meredith to come and give her the chaste salute,” he ordered of the throng.
“Thou wilt not insist on such a humiliation for my daughter,” appealed Mrs. Meredith.
“Insult!” cried the leader. “Who dares to say ’t ain’t an honour to kiss one dressed in such clothes? Give the miss a little help, boys, but gently. Don’t do her no harm.”
A dozen men were through the gate before the sentence was finished, but outcries and a surge of the mob at this point gave a new bent to the general attention. A horseman from the direction opposite to that from which the crowd had come was spurring, with little heed, through the mass, and the clamour and movement were due to the commotion he precipitated.
In twenty seconds the rider, who was well coated with dust, and whose horse was lathered with the sweat of fast riding, had come abreast of the cart, and Janice gave a cry of joy. “Oh, Colonel Brereton,” she called, “save us, I beg!”
“What are you about?” demanded the new-comer, sternly, of the crowd.
“We ’re celebratin’ independence,” explained he in the cart, “and all we wants of this miss is that she buss her friend Miss Shy Anna. They both is British sympathisers.”
“Be off with you, every doodle and rag-tail of you!” ordered the officer, angrily.