t.

"_Does tute pen mandy'd chore tute_?" (Do you think I would rob _you_ or
pick your pockets?) For he believed I was afraid of it. I knew Bill
better. I knew that he was perfectly aware that I was about the only man
in England who had a good opinion of him in any way, or knew what good
there was in him. When a _femme incomprise_, a woman not as yet found
out, discovers at last the man who is so much a master of the art of
flattery as to satisfy somewhat her inordinate vanity, she is generally
grateful enough to him who has thus gratified her desires to refrain from
speaking ill of him, and abuse those who do, especially the latter. In
like manner, Bill Bowers, who was every whit as interesting as any _femme
incomprise_ in Belgravia, or even Russell Square, believing that I had a
little better opinion of him than anybody else, would not only have
refrained from robbing me, but have proceeded to lam with his fists
anybody else who would have done so,--the latter proceeding being, from
his point of view, only a light, cheerful, healthy, and invigorating
exercise, so that, as he said, and as I believe truthfully, "I'd rather
be walloped than not fight." Even as my friend H. had rather lose than
not play "farrer."

This was a very pretty little country fair at Cobham; pleasant and purely
English. It was very picturesque, with its flags, banners, gayly
bedecked booths, and mammoth placards, there being, as usual, no lack of
color or objects. I wonder that Mr. Frith, who has given with such
idiomatic genius the humors of the Derby, has never painted an
old-fashioned rural fair like this. In a few years the last of them will
have been closed, and the last gypsy will be there to look on.

There was a pleasant sight in the afternoon, when all at once, as it
seemed to me, there came hundreds of pretty, rosy-cheeked children into
the fair. There were twice as many of them as of grown people. I think
that, the schools being over for the day, they had been sent a-fairing
for a treat. They swarmed in like small bee-angels, just escaped from
some upset celestial hive; they crowded around the booths, buying little
toys, chattering, bargaining, and laughing, when my eye caught theirs, as
though to be noticed was the very best joke in the whole world. They
soon found out the Sensation of the Age, and the mammoth steam bicycle
was forthwith crowded with the happy little creatures, raptured in all
the glory of a ride. The