"Here's the ball-gown I promised for to-night--Carrie's gown that she wore when she graduated last year. No, she doesn't need it. She has a blue silk-and-chiffon affair for the ball; so you'll be all right, won't you? And now let's go and have our luncheon, for we must hurry down town, where we have windows engaged to sit in and watch the parade. Oh, dear, I'm so sorry that my hubby, the captain, couldn't get away and come with us!" They had a delightful luncheon, very enjoyable after their morning on the water, then the party of six--Mrs. Stansbury, her mother, Mrs. Odell, and her three daughters, Carrie, Consuelo, and Daisy, with pretty Geraldine--set out for the centre of attraction, Newburgh's "triangular square" at the junction of Water and Colden streets. Here the party had two large plate-glass windows over a splendid dry-goods store. From this vantage ground the scene presented, as the magnificent parade filed past, was one to be treasured long in memory. It was a glittering spectacle, with thirty companies in line, and almost as many bands. Newburgh had not seen such a great day as this for years, with its glorious sunshine, brilliant uniforms, dazzling apparatus, splendid music, and throngs of appreciative people. The crowd was enormous, the broad pavements packed with a living mass of humanity; the door-ways, balconies, windows, house-tops, a sea of faces. When the dazzling pageant swept by, the effect was kaleidoscopic. The bright gay uniforms of the fine-looking men, the beautiful caparisons of the prancing horses, the heavily plated, imposing engines, the light and graceful carriages, with their paintings and stripings, their images and lamps, their glass-and-gold reel-heads, their silver and gold jackets--all gleamed and glittered in the flashing sunlight like an Arabian Night's dream, and the hearty applause of the gazing crowds made the welkin ring. Geraldine was charmed with everything, and her lovely, smiling face caught the upraised admiring glance of many a gallant fireman as the long column of thirty companies swept past to the ringing martial music of the accompanying bands. She forgot all her resentment against Cissy in her poignant regret that her chum was missing all this splendor and enjoyment. But, strange to say, not one regretful thought wandered toward her lost cavalier, Clifford Standish. She had forgotten him for the time, and her whole soul was thrilled with the present--permeated, enraptured with the thought of Harry Hawthorne, the handsome, dashing fireman who had so nobly saved her life. She loved him already, but she did not know her heart's language yet--her heart that had already elected him its king. What though his position was an humble one, it was equal to hers, and Geraldine had never reflected that beauty like her own ought to win her a fine rich lover. She was in a whirl of bliss at the all-pervading thought that she had met her fate at last.