he poorest of the Canons; so poor, that it had become
a proverb in the place: "As poor as Mr. Mockridge"; and also another
proverb, I am afraid, from the same source: "As dirty as Mr. Mockridge."
He was a very long, thin man, with a big, pointing nose, coloured red,
not from indigestion, and most certainly not from drink, but simply,
I think, because the wind caught it. His passion was for books, and he
might be seen every afternoon, between three and four o'clock, bending
over Poole's 2d. box, a dirty handkerchief flying out of the tail of
his long, black coat, and a green, bulging umbrella, pointing outwards,
under his arm, to the infinite danger of all the passers-by. He was so
commonplace a figure to Jeremy that, on ordinary days, he was shrouded
by an invisibility of tradition. But, to-day, he was fresh and strange.
"He'll be here to-morrow poking his nose into that box just the same,
and I shall be--"

Then, on the outskirts of the Market Place, Jeremy paused and looked
about him. There was all the usual business of the place--the wooden
trestles with the flowerpots, the apple-woman under her umbrella, the
empty cattle-pens, where the cows and sheep stood on market days, and
behind them the dark, vaulted arches of the actual market, now empty and
deserted. Bathed in sunlight it lay very quiet and still; some pigeons
pecking at grain, a dog or two, and children playing round the empty
cattle-stalls. From the hill above the square the Cathedral boomed the
hour, and all the pigeons rose in a flight, hovered, then slowly settled
again.

Jeremy sighed, and, with a strange pain at his heart that he could not
analyse, moved up the hill. The High Street is, of course, the West End
of Polchester, and in the morning, between ten and one, every lady in
the town may be seen at her shopping. It had always been the ambition
of the Cole children to be taken for their walk up High Street in the
morning; but it was an ambition very rarely gratified, because they
stopped so often and were always in everyone's way. And here was Jeremy,
at this gay hour, a trolling up the High Street all by himself he lifted
his head, pushed out his chest, and looked the world in the face. He
might meet the Dean's Ernest at any moment. The first people whom he saw
were the Misses Cragg--always known, of course, as "The Cragg girls."
They were, perhaps, Polchester's most constant and obvious feature.
There were four of them, all as yet unmarried, all