Immobile ladies glided by on the great pleasure drive like large tinted statues; dressed altogether as the colored pictures in fashion books, holding white curly dogs in their curved arms; the coachmen in front of them seemed carved in plum-colored broadcloth; only by watching the groom's eyelids could one ascertain that they were flesh and blood. Young girls, two, three, and four, cantered by; their linen habits rose and fell decorously, their hair was smooth. Mounted policemen, glorious in buttons, breathing out authority, curvetted past, and everywhere and always the chug-chug-chug of the gleaming, fierce-eyed motor cars filled one's ears. They darted past, flaming scarlet, sombre olive and livid white; a crouching, masked figure, intent at the wheel, veiled, shapeless women behind a whir of dust to show where they had been a breath before. And everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, a thin stream of white and pink and blue, a tumbling river of curls and caps and bare legs, were the children. A babble of shrill cries, of chattering laughter, of fretful screams, an undercurrent of remonstrance, of soothing patience, of angry threatening, marked their slow progress up and down the walk; in the clear spaces of the little park they trotted freely after hoops and balls, rolled and ran over the green, and hid, shouting, behind the bushes. It was a giant nursery, and the mere man who trespassed on its borders smiled deprecatingly, and steered a careful course among the parasols and tricycles, stooping now and then to rescue some startled adventurer, sprawling from the disgusted shock of encounter with this large and rapidly moving object. To Caroline, fresh from untrammeled sporting, through neighborly suburban yards, this disciplined procession, under the escort of Delia and the General, was fascinating to a degree. Far from resenting the authority she would have scorned at home, she derived an intense satisfaction from it, and pranced ostentatiously beside the perambulator, mimicking Miss Honey's unconscious deference to a higher power in the matter of suitable crossings and preferred playfellows with the absorbed gravity of the artist. "See! General, see the wobblybubble," Delia murmured affectionately. "(Will you see that child turn his head just like a grown person? Did you ever see anything as smart as that?) Did he like the red one best? So does Delia. We'll come over here, and then you won't get the sun in your precious eyes. Do you want me to push you frontwards, so you can see me? (Watch him look at me--he knows what I mean just as well, the rascal!) Just wait till we get across, and I will. Look out, Miss Honey! Take hold of your cousin's hand and run across together, now, like good girls."