ous that it was impossible
to separate the elements of it one from another--screams, shrieks, the
bellowing of animals, and the monotonous rise and fall of scraps of
tune, several bars of one and then bars of another, and then everything
lost together in the general babel; and to the right of him Jeremy could
see not very far away quiet fields with cows grazing, and the dark grave
wood on the horizon.

Would he venture? For a moment his heart failed him--a wave of something
threatening and terribly powerful seemed to come out to him through the
stile, and the people who were passing in looked large and fierce. Then
he saw two small boys, their whole bearing one of audacious boldness,
push through. He was not going to be beaten. He followed a man with a
back like a wall. "One, please," he said.

"'Come along now... pay your sixpences... pay your sixpences," cried the
man. He was through. He stepped at once into something that had for him
all the elements of the most terrifying and enchanting of fairy tales.
He was planted, it seemed, in a giant world. At first he could see
nothing but the high and thick bodies of the people who moved on every
side of him; he peered under shoulders, he was lost amongst legs and
arms, he walked suddenly into waistcoat buttons and was flung thence on
to walking sticks.

But it was, if he had known it, the most magical hour of all for him to
have chosen. It was the moment when the sun, sinking behind the woods
and hills, leaves a faint white crystal sky and a world transformed in
an instant from sharp outlines and material form into coloured mist and
rising vapour. The Fair also was transformed, putting forward all its
lights and becoming, after the glaring tawdiness of the day, a place of
shadow and sudden circles of flame and dim obscurity.

Lights, even as Jeremy watched, sprang into the air, wavered, faltered,
hesitated, then rocked into a steady glow, only shifting a little with
the haze. On either side of him were rough, wooden stalls, and these
were illuminated with gas, which sizzled and hissed like angry snakes.
The stalls were covered with everything invented by man; here a sweet
stall, with thick, sticky lumps of white and green and red, glass
bottles of bulls' eyes and peppermints, thick slabs of almond toffee
and pink cocoanut icing, boxes of round chocolate creams and sticks of
liquorice, lumps of gingerbread, with coloured pictures stuck upon them,
saffron buns, plum cakes