'At Chesterham!' cried Jimmy, feeling extremely relieved.
'You'll be there before the end of the week,' said the clown; 'and I should think your father would come down handsome.'
Now Jimmy began to feel quite contented again, and there was so much to look at that he forgot everything else.
When he was at school at Ramsgate he had seen a circus going in a procession through the town, and now Nan told him that this circus was going in a procession, and that it would start at half-past twelve. Everybody seemed very busy making ready for it, men were attending to the horses, and the gilded chariots were being prepared, and presently Nan began to dress.
'What are you going to be?' asked Jimmy, as she took a bright-looking helmet from under her bed.
'Don't you know?' she answered. 'Why, I'm Britannia.'
A little later she left the van with the helmet on her head, and a large thing which looked like a pitchfork in one hand. In the other she carried a shield, and her white dress had flags all over it. By this time one of the gilded chariots had been made very high; it seemed to be almost as high as a house, and on the top was a seat. Nan climbed up to this seat and sat down, and then a black man led Billy the lion out of his cage with a chain round his neck, and it was funny to see the lion climb up to the place where Nan was sitting and quietly lie down by her side.
The clown was standing on a white horse, with a long pair of reins driving another white horse; but the black man who had led the lion drove eight horses, and then there was a band, in red, and two elephants, and everybody in the circus except some of the children and a few women formed a part of the long procession.