Readers of my father's book will perhaps remember that my mother was not
seen at all--she was smuggled into the car of the balloon along with
sundry rugs, under which she lay concealed till the balloon had left the
earth. All this went for nothing. It has been said that though God
cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be
useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.
Painters, my father now realised, can do all that historians can, with
even greater effect.
Women headed the procession--the younger ones dressed in white, with
veils and chaplets of roses, blue cornflower, and pheasant's eye
Narcissus, while the older women were more soberly attired. The Bank
Managers and the banner headed the men, who were mostly peasants, but
among them were a few who seemed to be of higher rank, and these, for the
most part, though by no means all of them, wore their clothes reversed--as
I have forgotten to say was done also by Mr. Balmy. Both men and women
joined in singing a litany the words of which my father could not catch;
the tune was one he had been used to play on his apology for a flute when
he was in prison, being, in fact, none other than "Home, Sweet Home."
There was no harmony; they never got beyond the first four bars, but
these they must have repeated, my father thought, at least a hundred
times between Fairmead and Sunch'ston.
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