On each side of the square, with their backs to the stalls and facing
the shops whose goods and attractions overflowed to the pavement as if
offering themselves at the feet of the passers-by, stood a row of
countrywomen and girls with market baskets of butter and eggs, plucked
fowls, red currants, plums, curds, tight nosegays of pinks, stocks,
wall-flowers, or anything else saleable or in season which a cottage
garden produces. In and about among these, pushed women of all degrees
and ages, tasting butter, holding eggs to the light, or placing them
against their lips to test their freshness, stopping now and then to
feel the wearing quality of some piece of dress-stuff or flannel, draped
and ticketed alluringly at a shop door; all moving with the slow,
ungainly pace of those unaccustomed to walking and impeded by bundles
and purchases in both arms. Here and there a younger woman, dressed in
the fashion of the best shop in the town, with a basket of rather more
elegant shape, went about her marketing with equal decision, if more
fashion: the wife of some tradesman who lived in one of the numerous new
villas with small gardens increasing every year on the fringe of the old
town, who still liked the stir of the market and a bargain, but whose
chief reason for marketing herself would be given to a friend as, "you
can't trust those girls. They'll take anything that's given 'em and pay
double."

Farmers with that curious planted-and-not-to-be-up-rooted air which
distinguishes a man brought up to farming everywhere stood about the
corners of the market in groups, or greeted friends on the steps and in
the passages of the inns. The cattle-market was on the outskirts of the
town, and the business there was over early in the day. For the rest of
the day they exchanged and completed their bargains, or, supported by a
friend and with an air of determination not to be cheated, entered the
shops of hatters and tailors, or examined the bundles of canes and