‘We are very late; hundreds will pass before us,’ said Mrs. Barton despairingly, as she watched the lines of silk-laden carriages that seemed to be passing them by.  But it was difficult to make sure of anything; and fearful of soiling their gloves, they refrained from touching the breath-misted windows.

Despite the weather the streets were lined with vagrants, patriots, waifs, idlers of all sorts and kinds.  Plenty of girls of sixteen and eighteen came out to see the ‘finery.’  Poor little things in battered bonnets and draggled skirts, who would dream upon ten shillings a week; a drunken mother striving to hush a child that cries beneath a dripping shawl; a harlot embittered by feelings of commercial resentment; troops of labourers; hang-dog faces, thin coats, torn shirts; Irish-Americans, sinister faced, and broad-brimmed.  Never were poverty and wealth brought into plainer proximity.  In the broad glare of the carriage lights the shape of every feature, even the colour of the eyes, every glance, every detail of dress, every stain of misery were revealed to the silken exquisites who, a little frightened, strove to hide themselves within the scented shadows of their broughams; and in like manner the bloom on every aristocratic cheek, the glitter of every diamond, the richness of every plume, were visible to the wondering eyes of those who stood without in the wet and the cold.

‘I wish they wouldn’t stare so,’ said Mrs. Barton; ’one would think they were a lot of hungry children looking into a sweetmeat shop.  The police ought really to prevent it.’

‘And how wicked those men in the big hats look,’ said Olive; ’I’m sure they would rob us if they only dared.’

At last the order came that the carriages were to move on, and they rolled on, now blocked under the black rain-dripping archway of the Castle yard, now delayed as they laboriously made the tour of the quadrangle.  Olive doubted if her turn would ever come; but, by slow degrees, each carriage discharged its cargo of silk, and at last Mrs. Barton and her daughters found themselves in the vestibule, taking numbers for their wraps at the cloak-rooms placed on either side of the stairway.

The slender figures ascending to tiny naked shoulders, presented a piquant contrast with the huge, black Assyrian, bull-like policemen, who guarded the passage, and reduced, by contrast, to almost doll-like proportions the white creatures who went up the great stairway.  Overhead an artificial plant, some twenty feet wide, spread a decorative greenness; the walls were lined with rifles, and at regular intervals, in lieu of pictures, were set stars made out of swords.  There were also three suits of plate armour, and the grinning of the helmets of old-time contrasted with the bearskin-shrouded faces of the red guardsmen.  And through all this military display the white ware tripped past powdered and purple-coated footmen, splendid in the splendour of pink calves and salmon-coloured breeches.