and the cattle in the lush aftermath; then, after a
visit to the busy hop-market and a stroll among the curio shops in New
Street, to return by a different road as the shadows were lengthening
beside the copses and the hedgerow timber trees.

In former times the October fair at Weyhill, near Andover, was the
market for the Hampshire and Farnham hops; it was the custom for the
growers to send them by road, and load back with cheese brought to the
fair by the Wiltshire farmers. I heard of a Hampshire grower, who in a
year of great scarcity had spent some time trying to sell several
pockets to an anxious but reluctant buyer, unwilling to give the price
asked--L20 a hundredweight. They continued the deal in the evening at
the inn at Andover, where both were staying, and said "Good-night"
without having concluded the bargain. The grower was in bed and almost
asleep when he heard a knock at his door, and a voice, "Give you L18,"
which he refused. Next morning trade was dull and the buyer would not
repeat his offer, and at the end of the week the grower sent his hops
home again. Prices continued to fall, until two years later he sold
the same lot at 5s. a hundredweight to a cunning speculator, who took
them out to sea, after claiming a return of the duty (about L1 a
hundredweight originally paid by the grower), which the Excise
refunded on _exported_ hops. The hops went overboard of course, and
the buyer netted the difference between the price he paid and the
amount received for the refunded duty.

At these old fairs the showmen and gipsies take large sums in the
"pleasure" departments for admission to their exhibitions--swings,
roundabouts, shooting-galleries, and coco-nut shies. In Evesham
Post-Office a gipsy woman once asked me to write a letter; she handed
me an order for L10, and instructed me to send it to a London firm for
L5 worth of best coco-nuts and L5 worth of seconds. They were for use
on the shies; it struck me as a large supply, and the economical
division of the qualities as ingenious.

CHAPTER XIX.

METEOROLOGY--ETON AND HARROW AT LORD'S--"RUS IN URBE."

"But if I praised the busy town,
He loved to rail against it still,
For 'ground in yonder social mill
We rub each other's angles down,

"'And merge,' he said, 'in form and gloss
The picturesque of man and man.'"
--_In Memoriam_.

During the terribly wet summer of