come, be sure: that's if you don't mind the
Vaccination."

I suppose that my face expressed some wonder: for she went on, shaking
my dripping hat and hanging it on a nail by the fire--

"Doctor Rodda'll be comin' in half-an-hour's time. 'Tis district
Vaccination to-day, and he always inoculates here, 'tis so handy."

She nodded her head at half a dozen deal chairs and a form arrayed
round the wall under a row of sacred texts and tradesmen's almanacks.

"There'll be nine to-day, as I makes it out. I counted 'em up several
times last night."

It was evidently a great day in her eyes.

"But you've allowed room for many more than nine," I pointed out.

"Why, of course. There's some brings their elder childer for a
treat--an' there's always 'Melia Penaluna."

I was on the point of asking who Amelia Penaluna might be, when my
attention was drawn to the small eastern window. Just outside, and
but a dozen paces from the house, there stretched a sullen pond,
over which the wind drove in scuds and whipped the sparse reeds that
encroached around its margin. Beside the further bank of the pond
the high-road was joined by a narrow causeway that led down from
the northern fringe of Woon Down; and along this causeway moved a
procession of women and children.

They were about twenty in all, and, as they skirted the pond, their
figures were sharply silhouetted against the grey sky. Each of the
women held a baby close to her breast and bent over it as she advanced
against the wind, that beat her gown tightly against her legs and
blew it out behind in bellying folds. Yet beneath their uncouth and
bedraggled garments they moved like mothers of a mighty race, tall,
large-limbed, broad of hip, hiding generous breasts beneath the
shawls--red, grey, and black--that covered their babes from the wind
and rain. A few of the children struggled forward under ricketty
umbrellas; but the mothers had their hands full, and strode along
unsheltered. More than one, indeed, faced the storm without bonnet or
covering for the head; and all marched along the causeway like figures
on some sculptured frieze, their shadows broken beneath them on the
ruffled surface of the pond. I said that each of the women carried a
babe: but there was one who did not--a plain, squat creature, at the
tail of the procession, who wore a thick scarf round her neck, and a
shawl of divers bright colours. She led a small child along with one
hand, and with the other attem