d. "The procession is coming. Look at the crowd!" The
parade had seized a psychological moment.

There was a fanfare of trumpets in the east. Lines of people rushed for
the street, and, as one looked down on the straw hats and sunbonnets and
many kinds of finer head apparel, tossing forward, they seemed like surf
sweeping up the long beaches.

She was coming at last. The boys whooped in the middle of the street;
some tossed their arms to heaven, others expressed their emotion by
somersaults; those most deeply moved walked on their hands. In the
distance one saw, over the heads of the multitude, tossing banners and
the moving crests of triumphal cars, where "cohorts were shining in
purple and gold." She _was_ coming. After all the false alarms and
disappointments, she was coming!

There was another flourish of music. Immediately all the band gave
sound, and then, with blare of brass and the crash of drums, the glory
of the parade burst upon Plattville. Glory in the utmost! The resistless
impetus of the march-time music; the flare of royal banners, of pennons
on the breeze; the smiling of beautiful Court Ladies and great, silken
Nobles; the swaying of howdahs on camel and elephant, and the awesome
shaking of the earth beneath the elephant's feet, and the gleam of his
small but devastating eye (every one declared he looked the alarmed Mr.
Snoddy full in the face as he passed, and Mr. Snoddy felt not at
all reassured when Tom Martin severely hinted that it was with the
threatening glance of a rival); then the badinage of the clown, creaking
along in his donkey cart; the terrific recklessness of the spangled hero
who was drawn by in a cage with two striped tigers; the spirit of the
prancing steeds that drew the rumbling chariots, and the grace of the
helmeted charioteers; the splendor of the cars and the magnificence
of the paintings with which they were adorned; the ecstasy of all this
glittering, shining, gorgeous pageantry needed even more than walking on
your hands to express.

Last of all came the tooting calliope, followed by swarms of boys as it
executed, "Wait till the clouds roll by, Jennie" with infinite dash and
gusto.

When it was gone, Miss Sherwood's intent gaze relaxed--she had been
looking on as eagerly as any child,--and she turned to speak to Harkless
and discovered that he was no longer in the room; instead, she found
Minnie and Mr. Willetts, whom he had summoned from another window.

"He was called