“Come on,” said I, “I’m not going to monkey with signs any more.” We climbed the back fence, partly so that the chain, weighted with a pail of stones, might not creak, and partly because to do so seemed more fitting to the business in hand. We ran crouching, thereby arousing the attention of old Mr. Branchett, who was training a Virginia creeper along his back fence. “Hello, hello,” said he. “Pretty good runners for girls, seems to me.” Neither of us replied. Our souls were suddenly sickened at this sort of dealing. Wisconsin Street was a blaze of light. The ’buses were on their way from the “depots” to the hotels--nobody knew who might be in those ’buses. They were the nexus between us and the unguessed world. Strangers were on the streets. Everything was in motion. Before Morrison’s grocery they were burning rubbish, some boys from the other end of town were running unconcernedly through the flames, and the smell of the smoke set us tingling. At the corner a man was pasting a circus bill--we stopped a moment to look down the throat of the hippopotamus. Away up the street a band struck up, and we took hold of hands again, and ran. We crossed the big square by the City Bank, under the hissing arc lamp. By the post-office a crowd of men and boys was standing, and between the files young women whom we knew, wearing ribbons and feathers, were passing in and out of the office and laughing. Bard’s jewellery store was brilliant--it looked lighter than any other store with its window of dazzling cut glass and its wonderful wall of clocks whose pendulums never kept pace. In a saloon a piano was playing--we glanced in with a kind of joyous fear at the green screen beyond the door. We saw Alma Fremont, whose father kept a grocery store, standing in the store door with a stick of pink candy thrust in a lemon, and we thought on the joy of having a father who was a grocer. We longed to stare in the barber-shop window, and looked away. But our instinctive destination was the place before the Opera House, where the band was playing. We reached it, and stood packed in the crowd, close to the blare of the music, and shivered with delight. “If only the fire-engine would come,” Mary Elizabeth breathed in my ear. But in a little while the guffaws, the jostling, the proximity of dirty coats, the odour of stale tobacco must have disturbed us, because gradually we edged a little away, and stood on the edge of the crowd, against an iron rail outside a billiard room. The band ceased, and went up into the hall. We had a distinct impulse to do the next thing. What was there to do next? What was it that the boys did when they went down town evenings? What else did they do while we were tidying our play-houses for the night? For here we were, longing for play, if only we could think what to do. I felt a hand beneath my chin, lifting my face. There, in the press, stood my Father. Over his arm he carried my black jacket with the Bedford cord.