maryllis could
stand on a slight bank, and easily look over it. Without there was a
sheer red precipice of fourteen feet down to the dusty sward and
nettles beside the road.

Some bare branches of a plum tree trained against the wall rose thin and
tapering above it in a bunch, a sign of bad gardening, for they ought to
have been pruned, and the tree, indeed, had an appearance of neglect.
One heavy bough had broken away from the nails and list, and drooped to
the ground, and the shoots of last year, not having been trimmed, thrust
themselves forward presumptuously.

Behind the bunch of thin and tapering branches rising above the wall
Amaryllis was partly hidden, but she relied a great deal more for
concealment upon a fact Iden had taught her, that people very seldom
look up; and consequently if you are only a little higher they will not
see you. This she proved that morning, for not one of all who passed
glanced up from the road. The shepherd kept his eye fixed on his sheep,
and the drover on his bullocks; the boys were in a hurry to get to the
fair and spend their pennies; the wenches had on a bit of blue ribbon or
a new bonnet, and were perpetually looking at the traps that overtook
them to see if the men admired their finery. No one looked up from the
road they were pursuing.

The photographer fixes the head of the sitter by a sort of stand at the
back, which holds it steady in one position while the camera takes the
picture. In life most people have their heads fixed in the claws of
some miserable pettiness, which interests them so greatly that they
tramp on steadily forward, staring ahead, and there's not the slightest
fear of their seeing anything outside the rut they are travelling.

Amaryllis did not care anything about the fair or the people either,
knowing very well what sort they would be; but I suspect, if it had been
possible to have got at the cause which brought her there, it would have
been traced to the unconscious influence of sex, a perfectly innocent
prompting, quite unrecognised by the person who feels it, and who would
indignantly deny it if rallied on the subject, but which leads girls of
her age to seize opportunities of observing the men, even if of an
uninteresting order. Still they are men, those curious beings, that
unknown race, and little bits of knowledge about them may, perhaps, be
picked up by a diligent observer.

The men who drifted along the road towards the Fair were no "mashers,