,
Forrester thought, to provide for the subways, the classrooms, the
offices and even a couple of really top-grade traffic jams.

Gerda and the others of her party marched quietly. Ed, Forrester
noticed, tried a few cheers, but he got cold stares from his sister and
soon desisted. The oaf shambled along, his arm no longer around Gerda's
waist. This pleased Forrester no end, and he was in quite a happy mood
by the time the Procession reached the Temple-on-the-Green.

He was so happy that he performed his atoning high jump once again, this
time with a double somersault and a jack-knife thrown in, just to make
things interesting, and landed gently, feeling positively exhilarated
and very Godlike, on the roof of the Temple.

As the Procession straggled in, the music stopped. Forrester cleared his
throat and shouted in his most penetrating roar to the silent
assemblage: "Hear me!"

The crowd stirred, looked up and paid him the most rapt attention.

"On with the revels!" he roared. "Let the dancing begin! Let my wine
flow like the streams of the park! Let joy be unrestrained!"

He stood on the roof then, watching the crowd begin to disperse. It was
the middle of the afternoon, and Forrester was amazed at how quickly
the time had passed. The Procession itself had taken a good six hours
from start to finish, now that he looked back on it, but it certainly
hadn't seemed so long. And he didn't even feel tired, in spite of all
the dancing and cavorting he had gone in for.

He did feel slightly intoxicated, but he wasn't sure how much of that
feeling was due purely and simply to the liquor he had managed to
consume. But otherwise, he told himself, he felt perfectly fine.

The musicians were breaking up into little groups of three and four and
five and going off to play softly to themselves among the trees. The man
with the steam calliope sat exhausted over his keyboard. The old man
with the water glasses was receiving the earnest congratulations of a
lot of people who looked like relatives. And now that the official
music-making was over, a lot of amateurs playing jews'-harps and
tissue-paper-covered combs and slide-whistles had broken out their
contraptions and were gaily making a joyful noise unto their God. If,
Forrester thought, you wanted to call it joyful. The general tenor of
the sound was a kind of swooping, batlike whine.

Forrester stared down. There were Gerda and her brother and the oaf.
They were standing clo