predecessor thought it was low,
or slow, or old-fashioned to dedicate his ale-shop to Pigen Wassail or
Hail to the Virgin, and so changed it to a more genteel and secular form.
In the public place were rows of booths arranged in streets forming
_imperium in imperio_, a town within a town. There was of course the
traditional gilt gingerbread, and the cheering but not inebriating
ginger-beer, dear to the youthful palate, and not less loved by the tired
pedestrian, when, mixed half and half with ale, it foams before him as
_shandy gaff_. There, too, were the stands, presided over by jaunty,
saucy girls, who would load a rifle for you and give you a prize or a
certain number of shots for a shilling. You may be a good shot, but the
better you shoot the less likely will you be to hit the bull's-eye with
the rifle which that black-eyed Egyptian minx gives you; for it is
artfully curved and false-sighted, and the rifle was made only to rifle
your pocket, and the damsel to sell you with her smiles, and the doll is
stuffed with sawdust, and life is not worth living for, and Miching
Mallocko says it,--albeit I believe he lives at times as if there might
be moments when it was forgot.

And we had not been long on the ground before we were addressed furtively
and gravely by a man whom it required a second glance to recognize as
Samuel Petulengro, so artfully was he disguised as a simple-seeming
agriculturalist of the better lower-class. But that there remained in
Sam's black eyes that glint of the Romany which nothing could disguise,
one would have longed to buy a horse of him. And in the same quiet way
there came, one by one, out of the crowd, six others, all speaking in
subdued voices, like conspirators, and in Romany, as if it were a sin.
And all were dressed rustically, and the same with intent to deceive, and
all had the solemn air of very small farmers, who must sell that horse at
any sacrifice. But when I saw Sam's horses I marked that his disguise of
himself was nothing to the wondrous skill with which he had converted his
five-pound screws into something comparatively elegant. They had been
curried, clipped, singed, and beautified to the last resource, and the
manner in which the finest straw had been braided into mane and tail was
a miracle of art. This was _jour de fete_ for Sam and his _diddikai_, or
half-blood pals; his foot was on his native heath in the horse-fair,
where all inside the ring knew the gypsy, and