there. But there did not seem much likelihood
of it. Two or three apple and gingerbread stalls, from which
draggled children were turning slowly and wistfully away to go home;
a booth full of trumpery fairings, in front of which tawdry girls
were coaxing maudlin youths, with faded southernwood in their
button-holes; another long low booth, from every crevice of which
reeked odours of stale beer and smoke, by courtesy denominated
tobacco, to the treble accompaniment of a jigging fiddle and a
tambourine, and the bass one of grumbled oaths and curses within--
these were the means of relaxation which the piety, freedom, and
civilisation of fourteen centuries, from Hengist to Queen Victoria,
had devised and made possible for the English peasant!

'There seems very little here to see,' said Lancelot, half
peevishly.

'I think, sir,' quoth Tregarva, 'that very thing is what's most
worth seeing.'

Lancelot could not help, even at the risk of detection, investing
capital enough in sugar-plums and gingerbread, to furnish the
urchins around with the material for a whole carnival of stomach-
aches; and he felt a great inclination to clear the fairing-stall in
a like manner, on behalf of the poor bedizened sickly-looking girls
round, but he was afraid of the jealousy of some beer-bemuddled
swain. The ill-looks of the young girls surprised him much. Here
and there smiled a plump rosy face enough; but the majority seemed
under-sized, under-fed, utterly wanting in grace, vigour, and what
the penny-a-liners call 'rude health.' He remarked it to Tregarva.
The keeper smiled mournfully.

'You see those little creatures dragging home babies in arms nearly
as big as themselves, sir. That and bad food, want of milk
especially, accounts for their growing up no bigger than they do;
and as for their sad countenances, sir, most of them must carry a
lighter conscience before they carry a brighter face.'

'What do you mean?' asked Lancelot.

'The clergyman who enters the weddings and the baptisms knows well
enough what I mean, sir. But we'll go into that booth, if you want
to see the thick of it, sir; that's to say, if you're not ashamed.'

'I hope we need neither of us do anything to be ashamed of there;
and as for seeing, I begin to agree with you, that what makes the
whole thing most curious is its intense dulness.'

'What upon earth is that?'

'I say, look out there!'

'Well, you look out yours