walking-stick as a hammer, and knocked down the lot on any
convenient object that took his fancy, such as the crown of a
little boy's head, or the shoulders of a by-stander who had no
business there except to taste the brew; a proceeding which would
have been deemed humorous but for the air of stern rigidity which
that auctioneer's face preserved, tending to show that the
eccentricity was a result of that absence of mind which is
engendered by the press of affairs, and no freak of fancy at all.

Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the rest of the
Peripatetics, and Grace beside him, clinging closely to his arm,
her modern attire looking almost odd where everything else was
old-fashioned, and throwing over the familiar garniture of the
trees a homeliness that seemed to demand improvement by the
addition of a few contemporary novelties also. Grace seemed to
regard the selling with the interest which attaches to memories
revived after an interval of obliviousness.

Winterborne went and stood close to them; the timber-merchant
spoke, and continued his buying; Grace merely smiled. To justify
his presence there Winterborne began bidding for timber and fagots
that he did not want, pursuing the occupation in an abstracted
mood, in which the auctioneer's voice seemed to become one of the
natural sounds of the woodland. A few flakes of snow descended,
at the sight of which a robin, alarmed at these signs of imminent
winter, and seeing that no offence was meant by the human
invasion, came and perched on the tip of the fagots that were
being sold, and looked into the auctioneer's face, while waiting
for some chance crumb from the bread-basket. Standing a little
behind Grace, Winterborne observed how one flake would sail