gazing helplessly about him. Presently Ellen descended the stairs and
called to him. He took up his hat and followed his wife and the boy out
of the house. The latter eyed him wonderingly.

"Look at pa's hat!" he shouted. "Oh, my!"

Ellen stopped short upon her way to the gate.

"Alfred," she exclaimed, "you don't mean to say you're coming out with
us like that--coming to the band, too, where we shall meet everyone?"

"Certainly, my dear," Burton replied, placing the object of their
remarks fearlessly upon his head. "You may not be quite used to it yet,
but I can assure you that it is far more becoming and suitable than a
cheap silk hat, especially for an occasion like the present."

Ellen opened her mouth and closed it again--it was perhaps wise!

"Come on," she said abruptly. "Alfred wants to hear the soldier music
and we are late already. Take your father's hand."

They started upon their pilgrimage. Burton, at any rate, spent a
miserable two hours. He hated the stiff, brand-new public garden in
which they walked, with its stunted trees, its burnt grass, its
artificial and weary flower-beds. He hated the people who stood about
as they did, listening to the band,--the giggling girls, the callow,
cigarette-smoking youths, the dressed up, unnatural replicas of his own
wife and himself, with whom he was occasionally forced to hold futile
conversation. He hated the sly punch in the ribs from one of his
quondam companions, the artful murmur about getting the missis to look