e child sat on in neglect, watching the door for her
father. He never came; many, many men came, but not he, and she
sat like a shadow. She knew one did not cry in such a place. And
every man looked at her inquisitively, she shut herself away
from them.

A deep, gathering coldness of isolation took hold on her. He
was never coming back. She sat on, frozen, unmoving.

When she had become blank and timeless he came, and she
slipped off her seat to him, like one come back from the dead.
He had sold his beast as quickly as he could. But all the
business was not finished. He took her again through the
hurtling welter of the cattle-market.

Then at last they turned and went out through the gate. He
was always hailing one man or another, always stopping to gossip
about land and cattle and horses and other things she did not
understand, standing in the filth and the smell, among the legs
and great boots of men. And always she heard the questions:

"What lass is that, then? I didn't know tha'd one o' that
age."

"It belongs to my missis."

Anna was very conscious of her derivation from her mother, in
the end, and of her alienation.

But at last they were away, and Brangwen went with her into a
little dark, ancient eating-house in the Bridlesmith-Gate. They
had cow's-tail soup, and meat and cabbage and potatoes. Other
men, other people, came into the dark, vaulted place, to eat.
Anna was wide-eyed and silent with wonder.

Then they went into the big market, into the corn exchange,
then to shops. He bought her a little book off a stall. He loved
buying things, odd things that he thought would be useful. Then
they went to the "Black Swan", and she drank milk and he brandy,
and they harnessed the horse and drove off, up the Derby
Road.

She was tired out with wonder and marvelling. But the next
day, when she thought of it, she skipped, flipping her leg in
the odd dance she did, and talked the whole time of what had
happened to her, of what she had seen. It lasted her all the
week. And the next Saturday she was eager to go again.

She became a familiar figure in the cattle-market, sitting
waiting in the little booth. But she liked best to go to Derby.
There her father had more friends. And she liked the familiarity
of the smaller town, the nearness of the river, the strangeness
that did not frighten her, it was so much smaller. She liked the
covered-in market, and the old women. She liked the "George
Inn", where her