That idea, which she should have driven from
her as a serpent, she nourished in her bosom as though it were a dove.
CHAPTER XI: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS
THE FLORA
Chapter XI
IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA
The eighth of May dawned fair and clear, and from early morning the
young men and maidservants of Bugletown, who had Spent the past week
cleaning and polishing the houses, streamed out into the country to
pluck green branches for their further adornment. Already the thought of
the dance was in their heads, and its tripping in their feet, and they
sang through the lanes.
They waylaid strangers coming into Bugletown and drew contributions
of silver from them, according to custom, and all they did went to a
gay measure. By the time the gentry, both of the place itself and of
outlying regions, were assembled for the dance every house in the main
streets of the grey little old town was decked with boughs, its front
and back doors opened wide for the dancers, who at the Flora always
danced through every house set hospitably open for their passage.
The band, that all day long plays but the one tune, hour after hour,
was gathered together by noon, sleek and not yet heated, their trumpets
shining in the sun, their fiddles glossy as their well-oiled hair, their
big drum round as the portly figure of the bandmaster himself. Already,
in many a bedchamber, young women had twirled this way and that before
the mirror, studying the set of taffetas and tarletan, or young men
had polished their high beavers anxiously against the sleeves of their
brightest broadcloth frock coats.
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