With the Procession | Page 3

is but one other occupant of the carriage remaining--the only one,
after all, who can or could be the owner of the baggage. He is a young
man of twenty-three, and he sits with his back to the horse on a little
seat which has been let down for the occasion between the usual two;
his knees crowd one of the girls and his elbows the other. He seems
uncommonly alert and genial; he focusses brilliantly the entire attention
of the party. His little black mustache flaunts with a picturesque
upward flourish, and it is supplemented by a small tuft at the edge of
his underlip--an embellishment which overlays any slight trace of
lingering juvenility with an effect which is most knowing, experienced,
caprine, if you like, and which makes fair amends for the blanched
cheeks, wrinkled brows and haggard eyes that the years have yet to
accomplish for him. A navy-blue tie sprinkled with white interlacing
circles spreads loosely and carelessly over the lapels of his coat; and
while his clever eyes dart intelligently from one side to the other of the
crowded thoroughfare, his admiring family make their own shy
observations upon his altered physiognomy and his novel
apparel--upon his shoes and his hat particularly; they become
acquainted thus with the Florentine ideal of foot-wear, and the latest
thing evolved by Paris in the way of head-gear.
This young man has passed back through London quite unscathed.
Deduce from his costume the independence of his character and the
precise slant of his propensities.
The carriage moves on, with a halt here, a spurt there, and many a jar
and jolt between; and Truesdale Marshall throws over the shifting and
resounding panorama an eye freshened by a four years' absence and

informed by the contemplation of many strange and diverse spectacles.
Presently a hundred yards of unimpeded travel ends in a blockade of
trucks and street-cars and a smart fusillade of invective. During this
enforced stoppage the young man becomes conscious of a vast
unfinished structure that towers gauntly overhead through the
darkening and thickening air, and for which a litter of iron beams in the
roadway itself seems to promise an indefinite continuation skyward.
"Two, three, four--six, seven--nine," he says, craning his neck and
casting up his eye. Then, turning with a jocular air to the elder lady
opposite, "I don't suppose that Marshall & Belden, for instance, have
got up to nine stories yet!"
"Marshall & Belden!" she repeated. Her enunciation was strikingly
ejaculatory, and she laid an impatient and unforgiving emphasis upon
the latter name. "I don't know what will happen if your father doesn't
assert himself pretty soon."
"I should think as much!" observed the elder girl, explosively; "or they
will never get up even to seven. The idea of Mr. Belden's proposing to
enlarge by taking that ground adjoining! But of course poor pa didn't
put up the building himself, nor anything; oh no! So he doesn't know
whether the walls will stand a couple of extra stories or not. Upon my
word," she went on with increased warmth, "I don't feel quite sure
whether pa was the one to start the business in the first place and to
keep it going along ever since, or whether he's just a new errand-boy,
who began there a week ago! August, are we stuck here to stay
forever?"
The little sorrel mare started up again and entered upon another stage of
her journey. The first lights began to appear in the store-fronts; the
newsboys were shrieking the last editions of the evening papers; the
frenzied comedy of belated shopping commenced to manifest itself
upon the pavements.
The throng of jostling women was especially thick and eager before a
vast and vulgar front whose base was heaped with cheap truck cheaply
ticketed, and whose long row of third-story windows was obscured by a

great reach of cotton cloth tacked to a flimsy wooden frame.
Unprecedented bargains were offered in gigantic letters by the new
proprietors, "Eisendrath & Heide..."--the rest of the name flapped
loosely in the wind.
"Alas, poor Wethersby, I knew him well," observed Marshall, absently.
He cast a pensive eye upon the still-remaining name of the former
proprietor, and took off his hat to weigh it in his hands with a pretence
of deep speculation. "Well, the Philistines haven't got hold of us yet,
have they?" he remarked, genially; he had not spent six months in
Vienna for nothing. "I suppose we are still worth twenty sous in the
franc, eh?"
"I suppose," replied his mother, with a grim brevity. She rather groped
for his meaning, but she was perfectly certain of her own.
"I guess pa's all right," declared his sister, "as long as he is left alone
and not interfered with."
The evening lights doubled