on the bridge gazing down on the trout in the swift river below; and the
market-place and its busy crowds--all the familiar sights and scenes
that come under the spire like a flock of sheep on a burning day in
summer, grouped about a great tree growing in the pasture-land. But he
is not familiar with the interior of the great fane; it fails to draw
him, doubtless because he has no time in his busy, practical life for
the cultivation of the aesthetic faculties. There is a crust over that
part of his mind; but it need not always and ever be so; the crust is
not on the mind of the child.

Before a stall in the market-place a child is standing with her
mother--a commonplace-looking, little girl of about twelve, blue-eyed,
light-haired, with thin arms and legs, dressed, poorly enough, for her
holiday. The mother, stoutish, in her best but much-worn black gown and
a brown straw, out-of-shape hat, decorated with bits of ribbon and a few
soiled and frayed artificial flowers. Probably she is the wife of a
labourer who works hard to keep himself and family on fourteen shillings
a week; and she, too, shows, in her hard hands and sunburnt face, with
little wrinkles appearing, that she is a hard worker; but she is very
jolly, for she is in Salisbury on market-day, in fine weather, with
several shillings in her purse--a shilling for the fares, and perhaps
eightpence for refreshments, and the rest to be expended in necessaries
for the house. And now to increase the pleasure of the day she has
unexpectedly run against a friend! There they stand, the two friends,
basket on arm, right in the midst of the jostling crowd, talking in
their loud, tinny voices at a tremendous rate; while the girl, with a
half-eager, half-listless expression, stands by with her hand on her
mother's dress, and every time there is a second's pause in the eager
talk she gives a little tug at the gown and ejaculates "Mother!" The
woman impatiently shakes off the hand and says sharply, "What now,