She offered no objection, and we started in where the bands played for the street dances, amid the raucous tooting of a thousand fish-horns, the clangor of cow-bells, and the occasional snap of the forbidden fire-cracker. As we turned from Broad Street into Main, I found that the congestion was greater even than I had supposed. Here, several blocks away from the city hall, progress was so difficult that I took Barbara back a block to get the street that paralleled Main. This we could navigate slowly. Here, also, everybody was masked. Confetti flew, serpentines unreeled themselves out through the air, dusters spluttered in faces, and among the Pierrettes, Pierrots, Columbines, sombrero-ed cowboys, bandana-ed cow-girls, Indians, Sambos, Topsies and Poppy Maidens, Barbara's little white linen slip and soft white sweater, and my grey business suit, were more conspicuous than would have been the Ahkoond of Swat and his Captive Slave. Even after the confetti had sprinkled her black hair until it reminded me of Skeet's blossom wreath, infinitely multiplied, I still saw the glances through the eye-holes of masks follow us wonderingly. Opposite the city hall, where we must cross to get to the Capehart street, we were again almost stopped by the dense crowd. The Square was a green-turfed dancing floor; from its stand, an orchestra jazzed out the latest and dizziest of dances; and countless couples one-stepped on the grass, on the asphalt of the streets, even over the lawns of adjacent houses, tree trunks and flower beds adding more things to be dodged. At one corner, where the crowd was thick, we saw a big man being wound to a pole by paper serpentines. Yelling and capering, the masked dancers milled around and around him, winding the gay ribbons, while others with confetti and the Spanish cascarones, tried to snow him under. As we came up, a big fist wagged and Bill Capehart's voice roared, "Hold on! Too much is a-plenty!" He tore himself loose, streaming with paper strips, bent and filled his fists from the confetti at his feet. His tormentors howled and dropped back as much as they could for the hemming crowd; he rushed them, heaving paper ammunition in a hail-storm, and reached us in two or three jumps. "Golly!" he roared, "Me for a cyclone cellar! This is a riot. You ain't in costume, either. Wonder they wouldn't pick on you." With the words they did. I put Barbara behind me, and was conscious only of a blinding snow of paper flakes, the punch and slap of dusters, in an uproar of horns and bells. "Good deal like fighting a swarm of bees in your shirt-tail with a willow switch," old Bill panted at my shoulder. "Gosh!" as the snapping of firecrackers let loose beneath our feet. "Some o' these mosquito-net skirts'll get afire next--then there'll be hell a-popping!"