sociable and universal; there's a place for every man who will come
and take his part.

[27] #Booths#: temporary sheds, etc., for the sale of
refreshments, pedlers' goods, and the like.

[28] #Cricket#: the English national game of ball.

APPROACH OF VEAST-DAY.

No one in the village enjoyed the approach of "veast-day" more than
Tom, in the year in which he was taken under old Benjy's tutelage.[29]
The feast was held in a large green field at the lower end of the
village. The road to Farringdon ran along one side of it, and the
brook by the side of the road; and above the brook was another large
gentle-sloping pasture-land, with a foot-path running down it from the
church-yard; and the old church, the originator of all the mirth,
towered up with its gray walls and lancet windows[30] overlooking
and sanctioning the whole, though its own share therein had been
forgotten. At the point where the foot-path crossed the brook and
road, and entered on the field where the feast was held, was a long,
low, roadside inn, and on the opposite side of the field was a large,
white, thatched farm-house, where dwelt an old sporting farmer, a
great promoter of the revels.

[29] #Tutelage#: guardianship.

[30] #Lancet windows#: high, narrow windows of the earliest
Gothic architecture.

Past the old church, and down the foot-path, pottered[31] the old man
and the child, hand in hand, early on the afternoon of the day before
the feast, and wandered all around the ground which was already being
occupied by the "cheap Jacks,"[32] with their green-covered carts and
marvellous assortment of wares, and the booths of more legitimate[33]
small traders with their tempting arrays of fairings[34] and eatables;
and penny peep-shows and other shows, containing pink-eyed ladies, and
dwarfs, and boa-constrictors, and wily Indians. But the object of most
interest to Benjy, and of course to his pupil, also, was the stage of
rough planks, some four feet high, which was being put up by the
village carpenter for the back-swording and wrestling; and after
surveying the whole tenderly, old Benjy led his charge away to the
roadside inn, where he ordered a glass of ale and a long pipe for
himself, and discussed these unwonted luxuries on the bench outside in
the soft autumn evening with mine host, another old servant of the
Browns, and speculated with him on the likelihood of a good show of
old gamesters to contend for the morr