Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/14

 like white marshmallows. Some were families with two or three children.

The fun began. The game was to snatch the hard straw hat off some fellow’s head, and send it skimming away down the slope of humanity, where some smart bounder down below would catch it and send it skimming across in another direction. There were shouts of jeering pleasure from the mass, which rose almost to a yell as seven straw hats were skimming, at one moment across the slope of people.

“Look at that!” said Owen. “Isn’t that fun!”

“No,” said Kate, her little alter ego speaking out for once, in spite of her will-to-happiness. “No, I don’t like it. I really hate common people.”

As a socialist, Owen disapproved, and as a happy man, he was disconcerted. Because his own real self, as far as he had any left, hated common rowdiness just as much as Kate did.

“It’s awfully smart though!” he said, trying to laugh in sympathy with the mob. “There now, see that!”

“Yes, it’s quite smart, but I’m glad it’s not my hat,” said Villiers.

“Oh, it’s all in the game,” said Owen largely.

But he was uneasy. He was wearing a big straw hat of native make, conspicuous in the comparative isolation of the lower tiers. After a lot of fidgeting, he took off this hat and put it on his knees. But unfortunately he had a very definitely bald spot on a sunburnt head.

Behind, above, sat a dense patch of people in the unreserved section. Already they were throwing things. Bum! came an orange, aimed at Owen’s bald spot, and hitting him on the shoulder. He glared round rather ineffectually through his big shell spectacles.

“I’d keep my hat on if I were you,” said the cold voice of Villiers.

“Yes, I think perhaps it’s wiser,” said Owen with assumed nonchalance, putting on his hat again.

Whereupon a banana skin rattled on Villiers’ tidy and ladylike little panama. He glared round coldly, like a bird that would stab with its beak if it got the chance, but which would fly away at the first real menace.

“How I detest them!” said Kate.

A diversion was created by the entrance, opposite, of the