ittleback went to a little window in the wall, inside the
entrance-way, and spoke to a man in there, and evidently asked
permission to go in, and evidently got it; and they did go in, up a
flight of stairs, and found themselves suddenly among thousands and
thousands of people, as it seemed, all sitting in chairs facing the same
way, in a vast house lit up by gas light so that it was almost as bright
as day; and Toby and Freddie sat down in the very front row of these
people, and looked down over a railing in front of them on the heads of
thousands and thousands, as it seemed, of other people, all sitting in
chairs facing the same way. Everybody was facing towards a straight wall
at the other side of the house, which had pictures painted on it. At the
foot of this wall, in a kind of trench, there was a man at a piano, and
there were other men with fiddles big and little, and still others with
brass things, and they were all playing a tremendous tune together, but
just after Toby and Freddie had sat down, they stopped playing and Toby
nudged Freddie with his elbow, and said:

"Now, then, young feller, what do you think of this, eh? Just you wait!
Keep your eye on that curtain!"

He had no sooner said this than somewhere in the house somebody gave a
piercing whistle between his fingers, and in a minute there was such a
racket that it was impossible to talk. There must have been people above
them, and they must certainly have all been boys; for from up there
Freddie heard a clapping of hands and a stamping of feet, all in a
regular time, which spread to the whole house, and in the midst of it
the boys up there began to shout and call and whistle, and in a few
minutes there was such a hubbub as only boys could make, with whistling
between the fingers leading the riot. Toby nudged Freddie again with his
elbow, and to Freddie's surprise began to clap his hands and stamp his
feet with the rest; and as Freddie thought he ought to be polite, he
clapped his hands, too, though he did not know very well what it was all
about.

Suddenly the men in the trench at the foot of the painted wall struck up
again, and that quieted the other noise for a moment; but only for a
moment; someone whistled through his fingers, and in an instant those
fiddlers might as well have been sawing away at their fiddles out at the
Park, for all you could hear them; and right in the midst of it all,
while Freddie was trying to shout the word "Peanuts" into