I pretended to stare out of the window, but marked the wet smear on
his hand as he laid it on his lap.

In less than a minute it was my turn to alight. Unlike the
matrimonial agent, I had not two half-crowns to spare; but, catching
the sick woman's eye, forced up courage to nod and say--

"Good luck, my boy."

"Good day, sir."

A moment after I was in the hot crowd, whose roar rolled east and
west for miles. And at the back of it, as the woman had said, in
street and side-lane and blind-alley, I heard the footfall of a
multitude more terrible than an army with banners, the ceaseless
pelting feet of children--of Whittingtons turning and turning again.



FORTUNIO.


At Tregarrick Fair they cook a goose in twenty-two different ways;
and as no one who comes to the fair would dream of eating any other
food, you may fancy what a reek of cooking fills the narrow grey
street soon after mid-day.

As a boy, I was always given a holiday to go to the goose-fair; and
it was on my way thither across the moors, that I first made
Fortunio's acquaintance. I wore a new pair of corduroys, that smelt