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"We had a beautiful walk one Sunday on the Battery, and I think," hesitatingly, "that all the boys had on roundabouts." "Are you sure they didn't have on overcoats?" "Don't plague her, Jim. Tell us about the Battery, Hanny." Hanny could describe that quite vividly. Jim soon became interested. When she paused he said, "What else?"
A handsome carriage, with one seat, was drawn by four large and elegant black horses, the two near horses ridden by postilions in blue and silver, blue roundabouts, white breeches and topboots, a round- topped silver cap, and the hair, or wig, powdered, and showing just a little behind. A footman mounted behind, seated, wore the same colors; and the whole establishment was exceedingly tonnish.
Of course in winter they had to put on more things. In those days knickerbockers were unknown, and if a boy had appeared in short pants and long stockings he would have been thought dressed like a circus-actor. Boys wore long pantaloons, like men, as soon as they put off skirts, and they wore jackets or roundabouts such as the English boys still wear at Eton.
Fielden, rather petulantly. "There's the fair, my dear, more in your way, I see, than Sir William Temple's philosophy." And Helen was right; the fair was no Eastern bazaar, but how delighted that young, impressionable mind was, notwithstanding, delighted with the swings and the roundabouts, the shows, the booths, even down to the gilt gingerbread kings and queens!
"He don't properly belong to me," explained Tilda. "He belongs to Bill, that works the engine on Gavel's roundabouts; but he larned his tricks off me. That'll do, 'Dolph; go an' lie down." "He's a clever dog, and I beg his pardon for kicking him," said Mr. Hucks with a twinkle. "He's better 'n clever. Why, 'twas 'Dolph that got us out." "What, from the Orph'nage?" "Yes."
Anything was better than going back to the empty silence of his house and Jane Sands' expectant face, and the pretty, white-curtained room with the cot all ready for little Zoe, who was already miles away along that dark road before him, sleeping, perhaps, in some dirty gypsy van put up on some bit of waste land by the roadside, or, perhaps, surrounded by the noise and glare of the fair with its shows and roundabouts.
Whereas," he concluded, "if we time ourselves to reach Knowlsey by seven in the mornin', they'll all have locked through an' left the coast clear." Said Tilda, still contemptuous "I 'd like to turn Bill loose on this navigation o' yours, as you call it." "Oo's Bill?" "He works the engine on Gavel's roundabouts; an' he's the best an' the cleverest man in the world." "Unappre'shated, I spose?"
Farther away to the right were the striped canvas tents of the flower-show, still farther off the roundabouts churned out their music, the shooting galleries popped, and the swing boats creaked through the air. Cut off from these things by a line of fencing lay the open park in which the deer grouped themselves under the great trees and regarded the festival mistrustfully.
The Beekmans were fat and chubby, with their hair cut quite close, but not in the modern extreme. They wore long trousers and roundabouts, and low shoes with light gray stockings, though their Sunday best were white. We should say now they looked very queer, and unmistakably Dutch. You sometimes see this attire among the new immigrants.
Their eyes sent many a message before ever one of them stopped and ventured to speak. Perhaps the maiden turned away; if so, that was an end of the matter, and the youngster began the business all over again. Or perhaps she ran off with him to one of the closed arbors, where they drank coffee, or else to the roundabouts.
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