 be discerned on the afternoon under notice, in the
guise of the club revel, or »club-walking,« as it was there called.
    It was an interesting event to the younger inhabitants of Marlott, though
its real interest was not observed by the participators in the ceremony. Its
singularity lay less in the retention of a custom of walking in procession and
dancing on each anniversary than in the members being solely women. In men's
clubs such celebrations were, though expiring, less uncommon; but either the
natural shyness of the softer sex, or a sarcastic attitude on the part of male
relatives, had denuded such women's clubs as remained (if any other did) of this
their glory and consummation.
    The club of Marlott alone lived to uphold the local Cerealia. It had walked
for hundreds of years, if not as benefit-club, as votive sisterhood of some
sort; and it walked still.
    The banded ones were all dressed in white gowns - a gay survival from Old
Style days, when cheerfulness and May-time were synonyms - days before the habit
of taking long views had reduced emotions to a monotonous average. Their first
exhibition of themselves was in a processional march of two and two round the
parish. Ideal and real clashed slightly as the sun lit up their figures against
the green hedges and creeper-laced house-fronts; for, though the whole troop
wore white garments, no two whites were alike among them. Some approached pure
blanching; some had a bluish pallor; some worn by the older characters (which
had possibly lain by folded for many a year) inclined to a cadaverous tint, and
to a Georgian style.
    In addition to the distinction of a white frock, every woman and girl
carried in her right hand a peeled willow wand, and in her left a bunch of white
flowers. The peeling of the former, and the selection of the latter, had been an
operation of personal care.
    There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train, their
silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and trouble, having almost
a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance in such a jaunty situation. In a
true view, perhaps, there was more to be gathered and told of each anxious and
experienced one, to whom the years were drawing nigh when she should say, »I
have no pleasure in them,« than of her juvenile comrades. But let the elder be
passed over here for those under whose bodices the life throbbed quick and warm.
    The young girls formed, indeed,
