t seem very important on this great day.

Just before eleven o'clock the splendid state coach drawn by eight
cream-coloured horses came round from the stables to the front of
Buckingham Palace, and then the people waiting near grew more intensely
excited. The coach was just such as you might expect. It was all gold
and glass, and swung upon high springs so lightly that as it stopped the
body of the coach swayed about, and had to be steadied by the footmen.
The cream-coloured horses wore harness of crimson and gold, and they
tossed their heads and pawed the ground, as if they knew quite well what
was expected of them and how important they were. Then the King and
Queen took their seats, and as they were seen there was a great outburst
of shouting, taken up and echoed again and again; it was a royal salute,
and the volley of cheering rolled along the crowd from one to another,
on and on, announcing to those who waited farther off that King George
was really on his way to be crowned King of the greatest kingdom in the
world. The King and Queen were in royal robes, and they both bowed and
smiled, and the Queen's fair hair shone out like gold. As Princess she
had been popular but as Queen and a model mother to her children, the
darlings of the nation, she was to win a special position in the hearts
of the people. The Royal couple did not wear their crowns on the way to
the Abbey, but they would return in them after the ceremony.

As it went along under the trees in the park, the royal procession
passed close by some large stands built near St. James's Palace, these
were filled with children from the Foundling Hospital, the homes for
soldiers' sons and daughters and sailors' sons and daughters, of which
you have read in another chapter.

One of the most pathetic figures at the coronation was that of the
widowed Queen-Mother, Alexandra, who had come as a beautiful young girl
nearly forty years before from over the sea to marry King Edward.

[Illustration: THE CORONATION CHAIR, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]

The royal coach was followed by an escort of soldiers, and all the way
to the Abbey that loud roar of cheering was kept up. It must have
been very delightful for the King and Queen to think how warmly all
their people loved them, and how glad they were to see them crowned.

Meantime, at the Abbey itself everything had been got ready for the
ceremony. It is the custom at a coronation that all the peers and
peeresses should be pre