to considerable strains, looked at Jock carelessly, and then,
attracted perhaps by his eager face, smiled with a certain facile
amiability.

"But by th' time they're cooked your supper'll be late, I'm reckoning."

"Them potatoes have naught to do with our supper," said Mrs Clowes.
"They're for to-morrow's dinner. There'll be no time for peeling
potatoes to-morrow. Kezia!" She shrilled the name.

A slim little girl showed herself between the heavy curtains of the main
tent of Mrs Clowes's caravanserai.

"Bring Sapphira, too!"

"Those yours?" asked Jock.

"They're mine," said Mrs Clowes. "And I've six more, not counting
grandchildren and sons-in-law like."

"No wonder you want a pailful of potatoes!" said Jock.

Kezia and Sapphira appeared in the gloom. They might have counted
sixteen years together. They were dirty, tousled, graceful and lovely.

"Twins," Jock suggested.

Mrs Clowes nodded. "Off with this pail, now! And mind you don't spill
the water. Here, Kezia! Take the knife. And bring me the other pail."

The children bore away the heavy pail, staggering, eagerly obedient. Mrs
Clowes lifted her mighty form from the stool, shook peelings from the
secret places of her endless apron, and calmly sat down again.

"Ye rule 'em with a rod of iron, missis," said Jock.

She smiled good-humouredly and shrugged her vast shoulders--no mean
physical feat.

"I keep 'em lively," she said. "There's twelve of 'em in my lot, without
th' two babbies. Someone's got to be after 'em all the time."

"And you not thirty-five, I swear!"

"Nay! Ye're wrong."

Sapphira brought the other pail, swinging it. She put it down with a
clatter of the falling handle and scurried off.

"Am I now?" Jock murmured, interested; and, as it were out of sheer
absent-mindedness, he turned the pail wrong side up, and seated himself
on it with a calm that equalled the calm of Mrs Clowes.

It was now nearly dark. The flares of the showmen were answering each
other across the Fair-ground; and presently a young man came and hung
one out above the railed platform of Mrs Clowes's booth; and Mrs Clowes
blinked. From behind the booth floated the sounds of the confused
chatter of men, girls and youngsters, together with the complaint of an
infant. A few yards away from Mrs Clowes was a truss of hay; a pony
sidled from somewhere with false innocence up to this truss, nosed it
cautiously, and then began to bite wisps from it. Occasionally a loud
bu