dy looked old themselves--no stones could keep clean or fresh in
such smoky grimy air.

But some of the old customs still lingered on, and one was the weekly
market, which was held just outside the old church walls--the walls of
the church-yard, I should say--every Thursday, just as it had been since
the village first grew into a small market town, more than a hundred
years ago. And what some people would have done without the pleasure and
amusement of this market, I should be afraid to say. I mean some
_little_ people, the children of the vicar, who lived with their parents
in a grey old house, as grey and old as the church itself, which stood
at one side of the market place.

It was grey and grim outside, but inside the father and mother made it
as bright and cheery as they could. In winter I think they managed this
better than in summer, for good blazing fires do a great deal,
especially of an evening when the curtains are drawn and the cold north
wind, howling and blustering outside as if in a rage at not being able
to get in, only makes the house seem still cosier. And one of the good
things about the north is that coals are cheap and plentiful, so that
though the vicar was not rich, there was no need to go without
comfortable fires.

[Illustration: "There were four of them."]

But in summer it was sometimes _not_ easy to make the old house look
cheerful. Very little sunshine could get in, for on two sides the
neighbouring houses almost shut out the light. And the sun had hard
work, persevering though he is, to get through the murky air--murky even
in summer--that hangs like a curtain over what is called a
"manufacturing town." Then there was no garden of any kind, as the new
schools had been built on what was once the vicarage lawn, though after
all I hardly think a garden would have been much good, and perhaps the
children's nurse was right when she said:

"Better without it, 'twould only have been a trap for more soots and
smuts, and it's hard enough to keep the pinafores clean for half-an-hour
together as it is."

Nurse had come with their mother from the south, and she didn't take
kindly to the greyness, and the smokiness, and the grimness at all. But
she took very kindly to the babies, which was after all of more
consequence.

There were four of them--they were "leaving off being babies" now, as
little Ruth, the youngest but one, said indignantly, when some one spoke
of her and Charlie in that disres