Watching the funeral procession, which should have suggested such far other thoughts even to her undisciplined soul, Loveday was taken only by an idea so rash and impious that it alarmed even herself. It was the penalty of her dark and ardent blood that fear, like despair, added to the force of her desires. That idea, which she should have driven from her as a serpent, she nourished in her bosom as though it were a dove. CHAPTER XI: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA Chapter XI IN WHICH LOVEDAY ATTENDS THE FLORA The eighth of May dawned fair and clear, and from early morning the young men and maidservants of Bugletown, who had Spent the past week cleaning and polishing the houses, streamed out into the country to pluck green branches for their further adornment. Already the thought of the dance was in their heads, and its tripping in their feet, and they sang through the lanes. They waylaid strangers coming into Bugletown and drew contributions of silver from them, according to custom, and all they did went to a gay measure. By the time the gentry, both of the place itself and of outlying regions, were assembled for the dance every house in the main streets of the grey little old town was decked with boughs, its front and back doors opened wide for the dancers, who at the Flora always danced through every house set hospitably open for their passage. The band, that all day long plays but the one tune, hour after hour, was gathered together by noon, sleek and not yet heated, their trumpets shining in the sun, their fiddles glossy as their well-oiled hair, their big drum round as the portly figure of the bandmaster himself. Already, in many a bedchamber, young women had twirled this way and that before the mirror, studying the set of taffetas and tarletan, or young men had polished their high beavers anxiously against the sleeves of their brightest broadcloth frock coats. In speckless kitchens housewives prepared their cakes and cream, and the masters saw to the drawing of the cider, and, perhaps, tasted it, to make sure that it had not soured overnight. And in each heart different words were running to the Flora Day tune, words that suited with each heart's measure. The children in the streets sang aloud the doggerel words that long custom has fastened upon the tune:-- _"John the beau was walking home,_ _When he met with Sally Dover,_ _He kissed her once, he kissed her twice,_ _And he kissed her three times over!"_ Thus the heedless children with their lips, but their little hearts probably beat to the even simpler words: "_I'm having a holiday! Having a holiday!_" More staidly, and almost unheard by their time-muffled ears, a voice, nevertheless, sang to the housewives, telling each her copper and silver was the brightest in the town, and adding, perhaps, little gusts of memory that half hurt, half pleased, of how nimbly she had danced at the Flora in years gone by, and how fair she had looked....