the centre booth was quite a secondary attraction
to the Furrin Lady between us, with the raw lads and stolid farmers who
had come down from the hills, with their wise sheep-dogs at their heels.
If they stared at her, however, Madame was not unobservant of them, and
the critical power was on her side.

"These men and their dogs seem to me alike," said she. "Both of
them--they stare so much and say so little. But the looks of the dogs
are altogether the more _spirituels_," she added.

I should not like to record all that she said on the subject of our
village feast. It was not complimentary, and to some extent the bitter
general observations on our national amusements into which her
disappointment betrayed her were justified by facts. But it was not our
fault that, in translating village feast into _fete de village_, she
had allowed her imagination to mislead her with false hopes. She had
expected a maypole, a dance of peasants, gay dresses, smiling faces,
songs, fruit, coffee, flowers, and tasteful but cheap wares of small
kinds in picturesque booths. She had adorned herself, and Eleanor and
me, with collars and cuffs of elaborate make and exquisite "get-up" by
her own hands. She wore a pale pink and a dead scarlet geranium,
together with a spray of wistaria leaf, in admirable taste, on her dark
dress. Her hat was marvellous; her gloves were perfect. She had a few
shillings in her pocket to purchase souvenirs for the household; her
face beamed in anticipation of a day of simple, sociable, uncostly
pleasure, such as we English are so lamentably ignorant of. But I think
the only English thing she had prepared herself to expect was what she
called "The Briteesh hooray."

Dirt, clamour, oyster-shells, ginger-beer bottles, stolid curiosity,
beery satisfaction, careworn stall-keepers with babies-in-arms and
strange trust about their wares and honesty over change;
giddy-go-rounds, photograph booths, marionettes, the fat woman, the
double-headed monstrosity, and the teeming beer-houses----

Poor Madame! The contrast was terrible. She would not enter a booth. She
turned homewards in a rage of vexation, and shut herself up in her
bedroom (I suspect with tears of annoyance and disappointment), whilst
Eleanor and I went back into the feast, and were photographed with dear
boys and Clement.

Clement was getting towards an age when clever youngsters are not unapt
to exercise their talents in depreciating home surroundings. He s