s got up entirely for their sakes. There would be
thousands at Sandown, but the gate is locked with a half-crown bolt, and
they cannot get a stare at the fashionables on the lawn. For all that,
the true tramp, male or female, is so inveterate an attendant at races
and all kinds of accessible entertainments and public events that the
features of the fashionable are better known to him than to hundreds of
well-to-do people unable to enter society.

So they paddled along to the fair, slip-slop, in the dust, among the
cattle and sheep, hands in pockets, head hanging down, most of them
followed at a short distance by a Thing.

This Thing is upright, and therefore, according to the old definition,
ought to come within the genus Homo. It wears garments rudely resembling
those of a woman, and there it ends. Perhaps it was a woman once;
perhaps it never was, for many of them have never had a chance to enter
the ranks of their own sex.

Amaryllis was too young, and, as a consequence, too full of her own
strength and youth and joy in life to think for long or seriously about
these curious Things drifting by like cattle and sheep. Yet her brow
contracted, and she drew herself together as they passed--a sort of
shiver, to think that there should be such degradation in the world.
Twice when they came along her side of the road she dropped pennies in
front of them, which they picked up in a listless way, just glancing
over the ear in the direction the money fell, and went on without so
much as recognizing where it came from.

If sheep were treated as unfortunate human beings are, they would take a
bitter revenge; though they are the mildest of creatures, they would
soon turn round in a venomous manner. If they did not receive sufficient
to eat and drink, and were not well sheltered, they would take a bitter
revenge: _they would die_. Loss of L s. d.!

But human beings have not even got the courage or energy to do that;
they put up with anything, and drag on--miserables that they are.

I said they were not equal in value to the sheep--why, they're not worth
anything when they're dead. You cannot even sell the skins of the
Things!

Slip-slop in the dust they drive along to the fair, where there will be
an immense amount of eating and a far larger amount of drinking all
round them, in every house they pass, and up to midnight. They will see
valuable animals, and men with well-lined pockets. What on earth can a
tramp find to pleas