, and we sat round the
fire. We made a charming picture in our bright clothes, among what would
have been our native surroundings if we had been real gipsies, and we
knew how nice we looked, and stayed there though the smoke got in our
eyes, and everything we ate tasted of it.

The woods were a little damp, and that was why the fire smoked so. There
were the jackets we had cast off when we dressed up, to sit on, and
there was a horse-cloth in the cart intended for the donkey's wear, but
we decided that our need was greater than its, so we took the blanket
to recline on.

It was as jolly a lunch as ever I remember, and we lingered over that
and looking romantic till we could not bear the smoke any more.

Then we got a lot of bluebells and we trampled out the fire most
carefully, because we know about not setting woods and places alight,
rolled up our clothes in bundles, and went out of the shadowy woodland
into the bright sunlight, as sparkling looking a crew of gipsies as any
one need wish for.

Last time we had seen the road it had been quite white and bare of
persons walking on it, but now there were several. And not only walkers,
but people in carts. And some carriages passed us too.

Every one stared at us, but they did not seem so astonished as we had
every right to expect, and though interested they were not rude, and
this is very rare among English people--and not only poor people
either--when they see anything at all out of the way.

We asked one man, who was very Sunday-best indeed in black clothes and a
blue tie, where every one was going, for every one was going the same
way, and every one looked as if it was going to church, which was
unlikely, it being but Thursday. He said--

"Same place wot you're going to I expect."

And when we said where was that we were requested by him to get along
with us. Which we did.

An old woman in the heaviest bonnet I have ever seen and the highest--it
was like a black church--revealed the secret to us, and we learned that
there was a Primrose _fete_ going on in Sir Willoughby Blockson's
grounds.

We instantly decided to go to the _fete_.

"I've been to a Primrose _fete_, and so have you, Dora," Oswald
remarked, "and people are so dull at them, they'd gladly give gold to
see the dark future. And, besides, the villages will be unpopulated, and
no one at home but idiots and babies and their keepers."

So we went to the _fete_.

The people got thicker and thicke