I

Through the gloom of evening, and the flare¹ of torches of the night before the fair, through the still fogs of the succeeding dawn came paddling the weary geese, lifting their poor feet that had been dipped in tar² for shoes, and trailing them along the cobble-stones into the town. Last of all, in the afternoon, a country girl drove in her dozen birds, disconsolate³ because she was so late. She was a heavily built girl, fair, with regular features, and yet unprepossessing. She needed chiselling⁴ down, her contours were brutal⁵. Perhaps it was weariness that hung her eyelids⁶ a little lower than was pleasant. When she spoke⁷ to her clumsily lagging birds it was in a snarling⁸ nasal tone. One of the silly things sat down in the gutter⁹ and refused to move. It looked very ridiculous, but also rather pitiful, squat¹⁰ there with its head up, refusing to be urged on by the ungentle toe of the girl. The latter swore heavily, then picked up the great complaining bird, and fronting her road stubbornly, drove on the lamentable¹² eleven.

No one had noticed her. This afternoon the women were not sitting chatting on their doorsteps, seaming up the cotton hose, or swiftly passing through their fingers the piled white lace; and in the high dark houses the song of the hosiery frames was hushed: “Shackety-boom, Shackety-shackety-boom, Z— zzz!” As she dragged up Hollow Stone, people returned from the fair chaffed her and asked her what o’clock it was. She did not reply, her look was

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