The good-
natured crowd did not strain itself in cheering, though it seemed
to cheer cordially; and it did not stay long after the trap
tooled comfortably away. I then addressed myself to a little knot
of railway servants who lingered talking, and asked them what
some carriages were still waiting for at the door of the station,
and one of them answered with a lightness you do not expect in
England, "Oh, Lord This, and Lady That, and the Hon. Mr. I-don't-
know-what's-his-name." The others laughed at this ribald satire
of the upper classes, and I thought it safer to follow the King
to the races lest I should hear worse things of them.
III
The races were some miles away, and when we got to the tracks we
did not find their keeping very different from that of the
Saratoga tracks, although the crowd was both smarter and
shabbier, and it had got to the place through a town of tents and
sheds, and a population of hucksters and peddlers, giving an
effect of permanency to the festivity such as a solemnity of ours
seldom has.
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