Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/257

Rh Next in line pranced a pair of milk-white horses caparisoned in red-lacquered harness and drawing a "low-necked hack" on the back seat of which lolled two individuals resplendent in shiny top hats and frock coats. After them trailed a long procession of surries and other vehicles. As these evidently represented the free ride advertised on the banner, Boyd stepped off the curb toward one of them. Instantly it pulled up, and he climbed aboard.

A half hour later he found himself at Banksia Heights. The procession had wound its noisy way here and there in the downtown streets of the city, displaying its banner, dispensing impartially its pandemonium, collecting here and there—on the strength of the free ride and the free lunch—occupants for the long string of vehicles. It was a gorgeous day, bright and mild, typical of March in Southern California. Boyd was interested in the crowd that debarked at Banksia Heights. They were many, and a good proportion looked prosperous, but they had most evidently come for the lark and the picnic and the free lunch. It did not worry them one bit that they were accepting what amounted to hospitality from a stranger under what equally amounted to false pretences. For not one of them had the faintest notion of investing in Banksia Heights.

But neither did it seem to worry the two men in the shiny silk hats. Indeed, they looked rather pleased than otherwise as they superintended the debarking of the band from the omnibus that had picked it up after its processional function was over.

"Get under that oak," they instructed the drum major, "out of the sun; and just raise hell." Which same they certainly did. The leaves of the oak tree shivered in their brassy blasts; and the idly waiting crowd thrilled to the desired supernormal simply because each and every one of them had been brought up on country circuses, and the blatant blare of such a band would thus ever possess the power to quicken the blood.

The land sloped away gently toward the distant sea, spread out like a carpet. Acres of lupin, blue as the heavens; acres of golden poppies yellower than the soft sunlight; acres more of yellow violets or varicoloured bellflowers rolled away over the