"Do you read the Morning Post?" asked Mrs. Westgate.

"Oh, yes; it's great fun," Willie Woodley affirmed.

"I want so to see it," said Bessie; "there is so much about it in Thackeray."

"I will send it to you every morning," said Willie Woodley.

He found them what Bessie Alden thought excellent places,
under the great trees, beside the famous avenue whose
humors had been made familiar to the young girl's childhood
by the pictures in Punch. The day was bright and warm,
and the crowd of riders and spectators, and the great procession
of carriages, were proportionately dense and brilliant.
The scene bore the stamp of the London Season at its height,
and Bessie Alden found more entertainment in it than she
was able to express to her companions. She sat silent,
under her parasol, and her imagination, according to its wont,
let itself loose into the great changing assemblage of striking
and suggestive figures. They stirred up a host of old
impressions and preconceptions, and she found herself fitting
a history to this person and a theory to that, and making
a place for them all in her little private museum of types.
But if she said little, her sister on one side and Willie Woodley
on the other expressed themselves in lively alternation.

"Look at that green dress with blue flounces," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Quelle toilette!"