ps laughing and
chatting noisily. The newspaper boys had some competitors now, and the
Bank Holiday flavour of the streets was added to by a number of lads and
girls who had appeared from nowhere, with all sorts of valueless
commodities for sale, such as peacocks' feathers, paper fans, and
streamers of coloured paper.

Why these things should have been wanted I cannot say; but their
sellers knew their business very well. The demand was remarkably brisk.
Indeed, I noticed one of three young men, who walked abreast, purchase
quite a bunch of the long feathers, only to drop them beside the curb a
few moments later, whence another vendor promptly plucked them, and sold
them again. I suppose that by this time the vast majority of the people
had no doubt whatever about the news being a monstrous hoax; but there
was no blinking the fact that the public had been strongly moved.

It was with a distinct sense of relief that I learned from a servant
that Miss Grey was at home--had just come in, as a matter of fact. It
was as though I had some important business to transact with this girl
from South Africa, with her brilliant dark eyes, and alert, thoughtful
expression. I felt that it would have been serious if she should have
been away, if I had missed her. It was not until I heard her step
outside the door of the little drawing-room into which I had been shown,
that I suddenly became conscious that I had no business whatever with
Constance Grey, and that this call, on Sunday, within forty-eight hours
of my dining there, might perhaps be adjudged a piece of questionable
taste.

A minute later, and, if I had thought again of the matter at all, I
should have known that Constance Grey wasted no time over any such petty
considerations. She entered to me with a set, grave face, taking my hand
mechanically, as though too much preoccupied for such ceremonies.

"What do you think of the news?" she said, without a word of
preliminary greeting. I felt more than a little abashed at this; for,
truth to tell, I really had given no serious thought to the news. I had
observed its reception by the public as a spectator might. But, in the
first place, I had been early warned that it was all a hoax; and then,
too, like so many of my contemporaries, I was without the citizen
feeling altogether, so far as national interests were concerned. I had
grown to regard citizenship as exclusively a matter of domestic politics
and social progress, municipa