The regular station at the eastern fringe of the south bank gave, on Saturday afternoon, a clear view of the willow as it stood on the evening before the programme. That is to say, in the state into which the venue, the performers, the Cultural Subcommittee, the Clerk, and a few other parties had now between them brought it. The willow had been swept. The sweeping was figurative, the willow having no surface that wants sweeping in the literal sense. In the figurative sense it had consisted of a last round of small adjustments to the lower branches and to the line of the audience approach. The running order is confirmed for four items, in the order published before.
Drake Halford of the east shore was on the south bank shortly after the fourth honk, in a position long known as one of the more sought-after spots in the older drakes’ usual territory. He confirmed that he was there in connection with the programme. He had reached an understanding with the older drakes by which the position would be his from Sunday morning to the close of the programme. The understanding, he added, had been “as cordial as such understandings get, on this bank.” His household would attend. It runs to five members by his most recent filing, and its attendance is, in his words, “subject to weather and to the disposition of the youngest.”
The coot of the Channel Sprint has filed an attendance notice at the Clerk’s office. The Clerk is prepared to acknowledge that it was received. In its essentials the notice asks that the coot be admitted to the audience in a personal capacity, and not, it specifies, as a recent applicant for any role in the programme. The Clerk has accepted it without amendment. The Cultural Subcommittee, by all indications, has not opposed the request. The coot’s intentions during the programme are, by his own letter, “consistent with the dignity of the occasion as the coot conceives it.”
There was, late in the afternoon, one thing the gazette could not file. From the southern waters, at about the fifth honk, a sound reached the south bank that this correspondent is prepared, with due caution, to put down as the long-resident frog at practice. It was a short phrase of some four breaths, repeated twice, the second repetition at a slightly altered pitch. She could not, from her position, make the phrase out in any detail she would set in print. She moved to approach the southern waters more closely. The frog, on her approach, fell silent. She withdrew. Whether this was a part of his Item the fourth, or some private exercise with no bearing on the programme, there is no saying.
The performers have, by the Cultural Subcommittee’s report, finished their last rehearsals. Hettie and Mabel rehearsed jointly on Friday afternoon and again, briefly, on Saturday morning. The rehearsals went in the order anticipated, with no return of the kind reported in the dispatch of the sixteenth. Mabel, addressed in the final running order simply as Mabel, in accordance with the correspondence of the fourth, is by her own report ready. The smallest and the eldest goslings have finished their rehearsals separately.
The light, by the standards set in the dispatch of the eighteenth, was right. The Deputy was at the sluice gate, consulting the gauge and writing briefly in her notebook. The Warden was not at the sluice. The dabchicks were at the west pier in their accustomed formation. The heron was at its station. The fish, at the time of going to press, were not visible.
The programme awaits its evening. The willow awaits its audience. The Clerk has his timepiece, the older drakes have given their verdict, and every nameable party has now taken its mark for Sunday. Only the frog, fallen silent on the near approach, has left this paper a thing it cannot yet report. Whether the phrase from the southern waters was the close of the programme rehearsing itself, or a matter the frog keeps to the deeper water, will not be learned before the evening does.