“Just so shall we stand on the Day of Judgment,” she reflected, blinking at the glare.
Street boys vending programmes, ‘Lucky’ horseshoes, Saturnalian emblems—(these for gentlemen only), offering postcards of ‘Geo and Glory,’ etc., wedged their way however where it might have been deemed indeed impossible for anyone to pass.
And he, she wondered, her eyes following the wheeling pigeons, alarmed by the recurrent salutes of the signal guns, he must be there already: Under the dome! Restive a little beneath the busy scrutiny, his tongue like the point of a blade....
A burst of cheering seemed to announce the Queen. But no, it was only a lady, with a parasol sewn with diamonds, that was exciting the rah-rahs of the crowd. Followed by mingled cries of “Shame!” “Waste!” and sighs of envy, Madame Wetme was enjoying a belated triumph. And now a brief lull, as a brake containing various delegates and “representatives of English Culture,” rolled by at a stately trot—Lady Alexander, E. V. Lucas, Robert Hichens, Clutton Brock, etc.,—the ensemble the very apotheosis of worn-out cliché.
“There’s someone there wot’s got enough heron plumes on her head!” a young girl in the crowd remarked.
And nobody contradicted her.
Then troops and outriders, and at last the Queen.
She was looking charming in a Corinthian chlamyde, in a carriage lined in deep delphinium blue, behind six restive blue roan horses.
Finally, the bride and her father, bowing this way and that....
Cheers.