Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/277

 of a childish excitement; for it was the sound that the circus waggons had made, passing in a street parade which he had seen when he had been no taller than the glittering spokes of the gilded waggon wheels. And although he did not recall any conscious memory of that gala day, the magic of the sound made the world poetical again, made every woman's face beautiful to him, every couple in a hansom cab a pair of smiling lovers, every glimpse of the lives around him the enticing illustration of a story-book of romances of which the pages were being turned so rapidly that he could not read.

"This is the way I'd like to go through life," he cried. "Wouldn't you?" And when she did not seem to understand, he explained, with a wave of the hand: "Up above it all, where nobody notices you—looking down at it as you go by."

She nodded, content to humour him in whatever he said.

"I wouldn't like to climb down into it—even into one of those carriages." A liveried coachman and footman, like sentinels on their box, drove past with a bored couple in an open landau. "Imagine living under guard, like that!" he laughed. A butler stood at attention beside a door which he had opened for an old lady whom a footman was escorting solemnly down the steps. "In a brownstone prison like that!" An automobile came slowly toward them, quivering impatiently with the pulse of its checked engine, crawling among the cabs and carriages, a stout man beside the chauffeur shaking corpulently with the vibration of the