s
of honor waited, the press was thickest; here rows of stands had been
erected that groaned beneath their freight, while roof-tops and windows,
trees and telegraph-poles, were black with clustered humanity.

The king was tall and dark; a long beard hid his face. But the queen was
young and blushing, and her waiting-women were fairer than springtime
flowers. To a crashing martial air, she handed him a sparkling goblet in
which he pledged her happiness, while the street rocked to the roar of
many voices, and in the open spaces youths, grotesquely costumed, danced
with goblin glee.

Mr. Roland Van Dam secretly thought it all quite fine and inspiriting,
but he was too highly schooled to allow himself much emotion. He had
been hard put to obtain seats, and had succeeded only through the
efforts of a friend, the Duke of Cotton; therefore, he felt, the members
of his party might have shown at least a perfunctory appreciation. But
they were not the appreciative kind, and their attitude was made plain
by Eleanor Banniman's languid words:

"How dull! It's nothing like the carnival at Nice, and the people seem
very common."

Her father was dozing uncomfortably, with his two lower chins telescoped
into his billowing chest; Mrs. Banniman complained of the heat and the
glare, and predicted a headache for herself. Near by, the rest of the
party were striving to conceal their lack of interest by guying the
crowd below. Van Dam had been the one to suggest this trip to New
Orleans for the Mardi Gras, and he felt the weight of entertainment
bearing heavily upon him. In consequence, he assumed a sprightly
interest that was very far from genuine.

"This sort of thing awakens something medieval inside of one, don't you
know," he said.

Miss Banniman regarded him with a bland lack of comprehension; her
mother moaned weakly, the burden of her complaint being, as usual:

"Why _did_ we leave Palm Beach?"

"All those dukes and things make me feel as if it were real," Van Dam
explained further. "They say this Rex fellow is a true king during Mardi
Gras week, and those chaps in masks are quite like court jesters. Maybe
they sing of wars and love and romance--and all that rot."

"I dare say life was just as uninteresting in olden days as it is now,"
Eleanor remarked. "Love and romance exist mainly in books, I fancy. If
they ever did exist, we've outgrown them, eh, Roly?"

Being a very rich and a very experienced young woman, Miss Bannim