pty; and as it toddles off with a square parcel
under one arm, and a lovely being in black ringlets and white tissue
paper in the other, I wish that I were worthy of being asked to join
the ensuing play. Don't suppose there is any generosity in this. I have
only done what we are all glad to do. I have found an excuse for
indulging a pet weakness. As I said, it is not merely the new and
expensive toys that attract me; I think my weakest corner is where the
penny boxes lie, the wooden tea-things (with the above-named flower in
miniature), the soldiers on their lazy tongs, the nine-pins, and the
tiny farm.

"I need hardly say that the toy booth in a village fair tries me very
hard. It tried me in childhood, when I was often short of pence, and
when 'the Feast' came once a year. It never tried me more than on one
occasion, lately, when I was re-visiting my old home.

"It was deep Midsummer, and the Feast. I had children with me of course
(I find children, somehow, wherever I go), and when we got into the
fair, there were children of people whom I had known as children, with
just the same love for a monkey going up one side of a yellow stick and
coming down the other, and just as strong heads for a giddy-go-round on
a hot day and a diet of peppermint lozenges, as their fathers and
mothers before them. There were the very same names--and here and there
it seemed the very same faces--I knew so long ago. A few shillings were
indeed well expended in brightening those familiar eyes: and then there
were the children with me.... Besides, there really did seem to be an
unusually nice assortment of things, and the man was very intelligent
(in reference to his wares):.... Well, well! It was two o'clock P.M.
when we went in at one end of that glittering avenue of drums, dolls,
trumpets, accordions, workboxes, and what not; but what o'clock it was
when I came out at the other end, with a shilling and some coppers in
my pocket, and was cheered, I can't say, though I should like to have
been able to be accurate about the time, because of what followed.

"I thought the best thing I could do was to get out of the fair at
once, so I went up the village and struck off across some fields into a
little wood that lay near. (A favourite walk in old times.) As I turned
out of the booth, my foot struck against one of the yellow sticks of
the climbing monkeys. The monkey was gone, and the stick broken. It set
me thinking as I walked along.

"Wha