_Boom! Boom! Tring-a-ring--boom!_

It was that accursed Fife and Drum Temperance Band. In a moment
five-and-twenty fifers were blowing "See, the conquering hero comes,"
with all their breath, and marching to the beat of a deafening drum.
Behind them came a serried crowd with the stranger in its midst, and
a straggling train of farmers' gigs and screaming urchins closed the
procession.

Miss Limpenny, at the first-storey window of No. 1 Alma Villas, heard
the yet distant din. With trembling fingers she hung out of window a
loyal pocket-handkerchief (worn by her mother at the Jubilee of King
George III), shut down the sash upon it, and discreetly retired again
behind her white blinds to watch.

The cheering grew louder, and Miss Limpenny's heart beat faster.
"I hope," she thought to herself, "I hope that their high connections
will not have given them a distaste for our hearty ways. Well as I
know Troy, I think I might be frightened at this display of public
feeling."

She peeped out over the white blinds. Next door, the Admiral was
fuming nervously up and down his gravel walk. He was debating the
propriety of his costume. Even yet there was time to run up-stairs
and don his cocked hat and gold-laced coat before the procession
arrived. Between the claims of his civil and official positions the
poor man was in a ferment.

"As a man of the world," Miss Limpenny soliloquised, "the Honourable