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 correctness—but on this occasion they had evidently been allowed complete latitude. The two maids wore the shortest of short skirts, with violent-coloured shirtwaists. They had on hats exactly alike—large picture-hats of white, with wreaths of red roses. The same riot of colour had broken out on Scipio Africanus and Charles Sumner Pickup. Scipio sported a scarf-pin composed of two United States flags crossed, while Charles Sumner Pickup carried a cane from the handle of which fluttered red, white, and blue ribbons. The cook, who was plainly an ante-bellum product, had donned, for the journey, an immense crape veil, which dangled to the ground, and implied that she was in the first stages of widowhood. As a fact, she had "planted her ole man," in the Afro-American vernacular, about thirty years before, but at intervals since, she had adorned herself with the crape veil, as a dissipation in dress akin to the maids' wreaths of red roses, and the butler and coachman's assumption of the national colours.

Thorndyke, on reaching Constance's side, proffered his assistance, but his offer was promptly repulsed.