eceived from the shoulders of foot-passengers
thrust rudely against it as the market-people came pouring in or out, or
both together.

Had the spot been in the most crowded district of the busiest part of the
metropolis, where every inch of ground is worth an enormous sum, the
buildings could not have been more jammed together, nor the inconvenience
greater. Yet the little town was in the very midst of one of the most
purely agricultural counties, where land, to all appearance, was
plentiful, and where there was ample room and 'verge enough' to build
fifty such places. The pavement in front of the inn was barely eighteen
inches wide; two persons could not pass each other on it, nor walk
abreast. If a cart came along the roadway, and a trap had to go by it, the
foot-passengers had to squeeze up against the wall, lest the box of the
wheel projecting over the kerb should push them down. If a great waggon
came loaded with wool, the chances were whether a carriage could pass it
or not; as for a waggon-load of straw that projected from the sides,
nothing could get by, but all must wait--coroneted panel or plain
four-wheel--till the huge mass had rumbled and jolted into the more open
market-place.

But hard, indeed, must have been the flag-stones to withstand the wear and
tear of the endless iron-shod shoes that tramped to and fro these mere
ribbons of pavements. For, besides the through traffic out from the
market-place to the broad macadamised road that had taken the place and
the route of an ancient Roman road, there were the customers to the shops
that lined each side of the street. Into some of these you stepped from
the pavement down, as it were, into a cave, the level of the shop being
eight or ten inches below the street, while the first floor projected over
the pavement quite to the edge of the kerb. To enter these shops it was
necessary to stoop, and when you were inside there was barely room to turn
round. Other shops were, indeed, level with the street; but you had to be
careful, because the threshold was not flush with the pavement, but rose a
couple of inches and then fell again, a very trap to the toe of the
unwary. Many had no glass at all, but were open, like a butcher's or
fishmonger's. Those that had glass were so restricted for space that, rich
as they might be within in the good things of the earth, they could make
no 'display.' All the genius of a West-end shopman could not have made an
artistic arrangem