Woodley exclaimed that his lordship was
in town; he had seen his name in the Morning Post.

"Do you read the Morning Post?" asked Mrs. Westgate.

"Oh, yes; it's great fun," Willie Woodley affirmed.

"I want so to see it," said Bessie; "there is so much about it in
Thackeray."

"I will send it to you every morning," said Willie Woodley.

He found them what Bessie Alden thought excellent places, under the
great trees, beside the famous avenue whose humors had been made
familiar to the young girl's childhood by the pictures in Punch. The
day was bright and warm, and the crowd of riders and spectators, and the
great procession of carriages, were proportionately dense and brilliant.
The scene bore the stamp of the London Season at its height, and Bessie
Alden found more entertainment in it than she was able to express to
her companions. She sat silent, under her parasol, and her imagination,
according to its wont, let itself loose into the great changing
assemblage of striking and suggestive figures. They stirred up a host
of old impressions and preconceptions, and she found herself fitting a
history to this person and a theory to that, and making a place for them
all in her little private museum of types. But if she said little, her
sister on one side and Willie Woodley on the other expressed themselves
in lively alternation.

"Look at that green dress with blue flounces," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Quelle toilette!"

"That's the Marquis of Blackborough," said the young man--"the one in
the white coat. I heard him speak the other night in the House of Lords;
it was something about ramrods; he called them 'wamwods.' He's an awful
swell."

"Did you ever see anything like the way they are pinned back?" Mrs.
Westgate resumed. "They never know where to stop."

"They do nothing but stop," said Willie Woodley. "It prevents them from
walking. Here comes a great celebrity--Lady Beatrice Bellevue. She's
awfully fast; see what little steps she takes."

"Well, my dear," Mrs. Westgate pursued, "I hope you are getting some
ideas for your couturiere?"

"I am getting plenty of ideas," said Bessie, "but I don't know that my
couturiere would appreciate them."

Willie Woodley presently perceived a friend on horseback, who drove up
beside the barrier of the Row and beckoned to him. He went forward, and
the crowd of pedestrians closed about him, so that for some ten minutes
he was hidden from sight. At last he reappeared, bringing a g