The resident had ordered, as a festival for the population, an evening market on the square outside the regent's palace, to last for a few days, coinciding with the bazaar. There would be a people's fair, numbers of little stalls and booths and a Malay theatre, with plays drawn from the Arabian Nights. He had done this in order to give the Javanese inhabitants a treat which they would value greatly, while the Europeans were enjoying themselves on their side. It was now a few days before the fancy-fair, on the previous day to which, as it chanced, the monthly council was to be held in the palace. The anxiety, the fuss and a general nervousness filled the otherwise quiet little town with an emotion which made people almost ill. Mothers sent their children away and themselves were undecided what to do. But the fancy-fair made people stay. How could they avoid going to the fancy-fair? There was so seldom any amusement. But ... if there really were a rising! And they did not know what to do, whether to take the lowering menace, which they half-divined, seriously or make a light-hearted jest of it. The day before the council, Van Oudijck asked for an interview with the raden-aju pangéran, who lived with her son. His carriage drove past the huts and booths in the square and through the triumphal arches of the market, formed of bamboo-stems bending towards each other, with a narrow strip of bunting rippling in the wind, so much so that, in Javanese, the decorations are known as "ripplings." This evening was to be the first evening of the fair. Every one was busy with the final preparations; and, in the bustle of hammering and arranging, the natives sometimes neglected to cower at the passing of the resident's carriage and paid no attention to the golden umbrella which the messenger on the box held in his hands like a furled sun. But, when the carriage turned by the flagstaff and up the drive leading to the palace and they saw that the resident was going to the regent's, groups huddled together and spoke in eager whispers. They crowded at the entrance to the drive and stared. But the natives saw nothing save the empty market-place looming beyond the shadow of the banyans, with the rows of chairs in readiness. The chief of police, suddenly passing on his bicycle, caused the groups to break up as though by instinct.