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He had heard Peg's rather loud, insistent voice from the smoking-room below, and had momentarily left his friend to see if anything was the matter. Peg blushed fiery red when she saw him. Her black hair was unbound and streaming down over her shoulders. She wore a brilliant cherry-coloured dressing-gown, and her feet were thrust into gaudy Oriental slippers.

Phil had searched faithfully until finally he reached a "flat" just behind that on which stood the great gilded band wagon. Now, under its covering of heavy canvas, none of its gaudy trimmings were to be seen. Phil sat down on the low projection at the side of the flat car, eyeing the band wagon suspiciously. Somehow he could not rid himself of the impression that that wagon would bear scrutiny.

Of course I had to be let into all the secrets of their miserable shifts for dressing well on next to nothing at all, and they expected me mother and daughters to do the most wonderful and impossible things. I had to turn old rags into smart new costumes, to trim worn-out hats into all manner of gaudy shapes, even to patch up boots in a way you couldn't imagine.

At Drury Lane one would have said that the staging had been overdone, that the clothes were too ragged, the men too gaunt and too much wounded, and that by no stretch of imagination could a band be playing "God save the King" while a square painted train called "Lou-lou" steamed in, looking like a child's giant gaudy toy, and an aeroplane fussed overhead.

"A new Garden of Eden!" answered the other. On approaching the main entrance, they heard, within, the twangling music of a harp. The hall door was decorated with a large, bronze knocker of curious design. A tap of the falling hammer on its metallic plate, brought to the threshold a jet-black maid-servant wearing a gaudy turban.

The air up here would be delicious if only he could rid his nerves of the feeling that mortality was in it. He gazed restlessly at the crosses and the urns, the angels, the "immortelles," the flowers, gaudy or withering; and suddenly he noticed a spot which seemed so different from anything else up there that he was obliged to walk the few necessary yards and look at it.

Confraternities of every order were arriving in stately processions, their banners borne before them by gondoliers gaudy and awkward in sleazy white tunics, with brilliant cotton sashes habiliments which possessed a singular power of relieving these sun-browned sons of the lagoon of every vestige of their native grace.

But to feel its power fully, let it be heard when the exulting strains that are wont to fill the air with exuberant harmony are saddened into the sweet, mournful, heart-breaking notes that steal on the ear at a soldier's funeral, and the gaudy splendour of military array has passed into the drear pomp of that most touching, most monitory sight.

At last she found some real oak rails, and set to work upon them at once, planing with her sharp shear-jaws. A tiger-beetle, gaudy and hungry-eyed, sought to pounce upon her in this task.

Then the horses pranced gayly under their gaudy decorations, the wagons were bright with glass, gilt, and flags, the lumbering elephants and awkward camels were covered with fancifully embroidered velvets, and even the drivers of the wagons were resplendent in their uniforms of scarlet and gold. Now, in the gray light of the early morning, everything was changed.