Those review days were grand things when little Lily was a
child--magnanimous expenditure of hair and gunpowder was there. There
sat General Chattesworth, behind his guns, which were now blazing away
like fun, wearing his full uniform, point cravat and ruffles, and that
dignified and somewhat stern aspect which he put on with the rest of his
review-day costume, bestriding his cream-coloured charger, Bombardier,
and his plume and powdered _ails de pigeon_, hardly distinguishable from
the smoke which enveloped him, as a cloud does a demigod in an
allegorical picture.
Chord after chord brought up all this moving pageant, unseen by Sally's
dim old eyes, before the saddened gaze of little Lily, whose life was
growing to a retrospect. She stood in the sunny street, again a little
child, holding old Sally by the hand, on a soft summer day. The sentries
presented arms, and the corps marched out resplendent. Old General
Chattesworth, as proud as Lucifer, on Bombardier, who nods and champs,
prancing and curvetting, to the admiration of the women; but at heart
the mildest of quadrupeds, though passing, like an impostor as he was,
for a devil incarnate; the band thundering melodiously that dashing
plaintive march, and exhilarating and firing the souls of all
Chapelizod.
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