We stuck very closely to him whilst officers and orderlies kept on streaming in and out of a small door leading into another room. Most of their uniforms were jolly smart—either white with yellow facings or khaki with white facings. Cavalry officers had a light-blue striped cotton tunic fitting very tightly and very bulging khaki riding-breeches. They looked awful dandies, and all wore stiff white shirts with cuffs although it was so hot—the blacker they were and the more like niggers, the more stiff white cuffs they showed. What the Angel and I noticed chiefly about the infantry officers was that they didn’t seem to worry so much whether their clothes fitted them, and they nearly all wore patent-leather ’Jemima’ boots, with the elastic generally worn out and quite loose round the ankles. ’The President is not here—won’t be here for some time—he’s gone to San Sebastian,’ the Minister said in a low voice. You could never tell whether he was worried about it or not—his voice and his face never changed. ’We shall have to wait. He’s a fiery little chap—thinks he is the Napoleon of the west, and loves to show off before us Europeans. He’ll be in a pretty bad temper to-day. He meant to arrest the Vice-President, de Costa, as he left the cathedral, but he and his friends got wind of it and left by a side door; smuggled away as priests or nuns, some say, and have slipped through his fingers. He meant to "scotch" the revolution which is coming, and he’s failed badly, so he’ll be a pretty handful to tackle.’ ’Well, _he_ might be able to tackle him,’ the Angel whispered, and we both thought that he looked perfectly grand in his uniform. Then there was a great clatter outside; we could hear officers calling their men to attention; trumpets were blown, all the officers in the room took their cigarettes out of their mouths, stood bolt-upright, and in came the President just as we’d seen him in the procession. Every one made a lane for him to pass into the room beyond, and he spotted us, but hardly took any notice of the Minister’s salute or of our Captain’s either, which made the Angel and me very angry, though we were really too frightened at his very cruel-looking eyes to be angry. Several people followed him—all very gorgeously dressed—covered with medals and with green and yellow sashes over their shoulders, and the last to come in was the little A.D.C. from Los Angelos with the big spurs and the curved sword. The Minister spoke to one of them, who seemed to be doing ’orderly’ officer, but he only shrugged his shoulders, went into the little room. We heard a few fierce words and back he came, shrugging his shoulders all the more.