landlord, who in coachman's dress, with a bouquet of autumnal flowers in
his lapel, sat holding his garlanded reins over the backs of his six
horses; and then the coach as she intended it to appear in the parade set
out as soon as the turnouts of the other houses joined it. They were all
to meet at the Middlemount, which was thickly draped and festooned in
flags, with knots of evergreen and the first red boughs of the young
swamp maples holding them in place over its irregular facade. The coach
itself was amass of foliage and flowers, from which it defined itself as
a wheeled vehicle in vague and partial outline; the other wagons and
coaches, as they drove tremulously up, with an effect of having been
mired in blossoms about their spokes and hubs, had the unwieldiness which
seems inseparable from spectacularity. They represented motives in color
and design sometimes tasteless enough, and sometimes so nearly very good
that Mrs. Milray's heart was a great deal in her mouth, as they arrived,
each with its hotel-cry roared and shrilled from a score of masculine and
feminine throats, and finally spelled for distinctness sake, with an
ultimate yell or growl. But she had not finished giving the
lady-representative of a Sunday newspaper the points of her own tableau,
before she regained the courage and the faith in which she remained
serenely steadfast throughout the parade.

It was when all the equipages of the neighborhood had arrived that she
climbed to her place; the ladder was taken away; the landlord spoke to
his horses, and the Middlemount coach led the parade, amid the renewed
slogans, and the cries and fluttered handkerchiefs of the guests crowding
the verandas.

The line of march was by one road to Middlemount Centre, where the prize
was to be awarded at the judges' stand, and then the coaches were to
escort the triumphant vehicle homeward by another route, so as to pass as