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Note 1. The peculiar ways attributed to the little Princess, and
especially this incident, are taken from an account of a real deaf and
dumb child, published many years ago. There was certainly something
about the Princess which her attendants considered wonderful and
beautiful.

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE DUMB PLAYMATES.

Out into the Michaelmas fair our friends went.

In these days, when fairs have quite changed their character, we cannot
easily form a notion of what they once were. The fair, held in every
town four times a year, was a very important matter. There were much
fewer shops than now; and not only in the town, but from all the
surrounding villages people flocked to the fair, to lay in food and
clothes and all sorts of necessaries, enough to last till the next
fair-day. They had very little fresh butcher's meat, and very few
vegetables except what they grew themselves; so they ate numbers of
things salted which we have fresh. Not only salt fish and salt neat,
but salt cabbage formed a great part of their diet. The consequence of
all this salt food was that they suffered dreadfully from scurvy. But
they did not run to the doctor, for except in rare instances there was
no doctor to run to! All doctors were clergymen then, and there were
very few of them. In the large towns there were apothecaries, or
chemists, who often prescribed for people; and there were "wise women"
who knew a good deal about herbs, and sometimes gave good medicines,
along with a great deal of foolish nonsense in the way of charms and all
sorts of silly fancies. At that time, ladies were taught a good deal
about medicine, and a benevolent lady was often the doctor for a large
neighbourhood. But we are wandering away from the Michaelmas fair, and
we must come back.

The fair was a very busy scene. In some places it was hard work to get
along at all. The booths were set up, not in the streets but in the
churchyards, the market place, and on any waste space available. And
what with the noise of business, the hum of gossip, the shouts of
competing sellers, and the sound of hundreds of clogs on the round
paving-stones, it may be readily supposed that quiet was far away.

Avice's first business was to lay in a stock of salt meat and salt fish.
Very little of either was used fresh, for it was not obtainable: and
still less would have been used so far as fish is concerned, had not the
law, alike of the Church and of