amel padding through the dust
and brushing the dew off English hedges, the hermetically sealed
omnibus in which the artistes bumped and dozed, while the
wardrobe-woman, Mrs. Thompson, held forth undeterred on "those
advantages of birth, house-rent, and furniture, which made her
discomforts of real importance, whatever those of the other ladies in
the show might be."

But in bringing her Vagabonds into relation with ordinary English
life, Mrs. Woods loses all, or nearly all, of that esoteric
professional interest which, at first sight, would seem the chief
reason for choosing circus people to write about. The story of _Les
Freres Zemganno_ has, as I have said, this esoteric professional
interest. The story of _The Vagabonds_ is the story of a husband and
of a young wife who does not love him, but discovers that she loves
another man--a story as old as the hills and common to every rank and
every calling. Mrs. Woods has made the husband a middle-aged clown,
the wife a girl with strict notions about respectability, and the
lover, Fritz, a handsome young German gymnast. But there was no
fundamental reason for this choice of professions. The tale might be
every bit as true of a grocer, and a grocer's wife, and a grocer's
assistant. Once or twice, indeed, in the earlier chapters we have
promise of a more peculiar story when we read of Mrs. Morris's
objection to seeing her husband play the clown. "No woman," she says,
"that hadn't been brought up to the business would like to see her
husband look like that." And of Joe Morris we read that he took an
artistic pride in his clowning. But there follows no serious struggle
between love and art--no such struggle, for instance, as Zola has
worked out to tragic issues in his _L'OEuvre_. Mrs. Morris's shame at
her husband's ridiculous appearance merely heightens the contrast in
her eyes between him and the handsome young gymnast.

But though the circus-business is not essential, Mrs. Woods makes most
effective use of it. I will select one notable illustration of this.
When Mrs. Morris at length makes her confession--it is in the wagon,
and at night--the unhappy husband wraps her up carefully in her bed
and creeps away with his grief to the barn where Chang, a ferocious
elephant amenable only to him, has been stabled:--

"He opened the door; the barn was pitch dark, but as he entered
he could hear the noise of the chain which had been fastened to
the elephant's legs b