the manner of her service to him, but accepted his patronizing favour gratefully, with humility, and now as he went out, leaving behind him a mingled perfume of cigars, brilliantine and sweet pea blossom and the memory of his bold and dashing presence, she followed his figure with fond and admiring eyes.
Presently, bereft of the tinsel of his personality, Mary's spirits drooped, and unoccupied, with time to think of herself, she became disturbed, restless, excited. Every one in the house was busy: Nessie frowning over her lessons, Mamma deeply engaged in her novel, Grandma sunk in the torpor of digestion. She wandered about the kitchen, thinking of her father's command, uneasy, agitated, until Mamma looked up in annoyance.
'What's wrong with you wanderin* about like a knotless thread! Take up your sewing, or if you've nothing to do, away to your bed and leave folks to read in peace!'
Should she go to bed? she considered perplexedly. No! It was too ridiculously early. She had been confined in the house all day and ought perhaps to get into the open for a little, where the freshness of air would restore her, ease her mind after the closeness of the warm day. Every one would think she had gone to her room; she would never be missed. Somehow, without being aware of her movements, she was in the hall, had put on her old coarse straw bonnet with the
weather-beaten little bunch of cherries and the faded pink ribbon, had slipped on her worn cashmere coat, quietly opened the front door and moved down the steps.
She was startled, almost, to find herself outside, but thought reassuringly that with such clothes it was impossible for her to go anywhere, and as she reflected that she had no really nice things to wear, she shook her head sadly so that the woebegone cherries, which had hung from her hat through two long seasons, rattled in faint protest and almost dropped to the ground. Now that she was in the open her mind moved more freely and she wondered what Denis was doing. Getting ready to go to the fair, of course. Why was every one else allowed to go and not she? It was unjust, for there was no harm in it. It was an institution recognised, and patronised tolerantly, by even the very best of the townspeople. She leant over the front gate, swinging to and fro gently, drinking in the cool beauty of the dusk, fascinated by the seductive evening, so full of dew-drenched
odours, so animate with the awakening life that had been still during the day. Swallows darted and circled around the three straight silver birches in the field opposite, whilst a little further oflf a yellow-hammer called to her, entreatingly, 'Come out! Come out! Jingle, jingle, jingle the keys, jingle, jingle, jingle the keys!' It was a shame to be indoors on a night like this! She stepped into the roadway, telling herself that she would take a little walk, just to the end of the road before coming back for that game of draughts with Nessie. She sauntered on unobserved, noting unconsciously that in the whole extent of the quiet road no person was in sight. Denis was expecting her to-night at the fair. He had asked her to meet him, and she, like a mad woman, had promised to be there. The pity of it that she could not go! She was terrified of her father and he had absolutely forbidden it.
How quickly she reached the end of the road, and although she seemed to have been out only for a moment she knew that she had come far enough, that it was now time for her to go back; but as her will commanded her to turn, some stronger force forbade it, and she kept on, her heart thumping furiously, her steps quickening in pace with her heartbeats. Then, through the magic of the night, the sound of music met her ears, faint, enticing, compelling. She hastened her gait almost to a run, thought, 'I must, oh! I must see him,' and
rushed onwards. Trembling, she entered the fair ground.
II
LEVENFORD FAIR was an annual festival, the nucleus of which was the congregation of a number of travelling troupes and side shows, a small menagerie, which featured actually an elephant and a cage of two lions, an authentic shooting gallery where real bullets were used, and two fortune tellers with unimpeachable and freely displayed credentials, which, together with a variety of other minor attractions, assembled at an agreed date upon that piece of public land known
locally as the Common.
The ground was triangular in shape. On one side, at the town end, stood the solidly important components of the fair, the larger tents and marquees, on another the moving vehicles of pleasure, swings, roundabouts and merry-go-rounds, and on the third, bordering the meadows of the river Leven, were the galleries, coconut shies, lab-in-the-tub and molly-dolly stalls, the fruit, lemonade, hokey-pokey and nougat vendors, and a multitude of small booths which engaged and fascinated the eye. The gathering was by far the largest of its kind
in the district and, its popularity set by precedent and appreciation, it
drew like a magnet upon the town and countryside during the evenings for the period of one scintillating week, embracing within its confines a jovial mass of humanity, which even now slowly surged around the triangle on a perpetually advancing wave of pleasure.
Mary plunged into the tide and was immediately engulfed. She ceased to become an entity and was absorbed by the sweep of pushing, laughing, shouting, gesticulating beings, which bore her forward independent of her own volition, and as she was pushed this way and that, yet always borne onwards by this encompassing force, she became at once amazed at her own temerity. The press of the rough crowd was not what her idyllic fancy had pictured, the blatant shouts
and flaring lights not the impressions of her imagination, and she had not been five minutes on the ground before she began to wish she had not come and to perceive that, after all, her father might be right in his assertion, wise to have forbidden her to come. Now she felt that, though the sole purpose of her coming was to see Denis, it would be impossible for him to discover her in such a throng, and as a sharp, jostling elbow knocked against her ribs and a fat ploughboy trod upon her foot and grinned uncouthly in apology, she grew wretched and frightened. What manner of feeling had drawn her amongst these vulgar clowns? Why had she so imprudently, rashly, dangerously disobeyed her father and come with such light and ardent unrestraint at the beck of a youth whom she had known for only one month?
As she swayed around she viewed that month in retrospect, recollecting with a melancholy simplicity that the swing doors of the Borough Public Library had been, in part, responsible. These doors bore on the inside the authoritative word 'Pull', and, in obedience to that terse mandate, when coming out of the Library, one was supposed to pull strenuously upon them; but they were so stiff and heavy that, when one was cumbered with a book and unobserved by the compelling eye of the janitor of the Borough Buildings, it was much easier to disregard the law and push. Upon one memorable occasion she had, undoubtedly, pushed, and thrusting forward with no uncertain hand, had launched herself straight into the waistcoat of a young man in brown. The impetus of her exit allowed her to observe fully the colour of his neat suit. His hair, too, was brown, and his eyes, and his face which had tiny freckles of a deeper brown
dusted upon it; and as she raised her startled eyes she had noticed immediately, despite her discomposure, that his teeth, when he smiled, as he did instantly, were white and perfect. Whilst she stared at him with wide eyes and parted lips, he had composed his features, had politely collected her fallen book, calmly opened it, and looked at her name on the borrower's ticket.
'I am sorry to have upset you, Miss Mary Brodie,' he had said gravely, but smiling at her the while out of his hazel eyes. 'These doors are exceedingly treacherous. They ought, of course, to have glass windows to them. It is entirely my fault, for not having brought the matter before the Borough Council.'
She had giggled insanely, immodestly, but alas, irrepressibly at his delicious raillery and had only ceased when he added, tentatively, as though it were of no importance: 'My name is Foyle I live in Darroch.' They looked at each other for a long moment, while she, of course, had flushed like a fool (since then he had told her that it was an adorable blush) and had said timidly, 'I'm afraid I must be going.' What a weak remark, she now reflected! He had not attempted to detain her, and with perfect courtesy had stepped aside, lifted his hat and bowed; but all the way down the street she had felt those lively brown eyes upon her, respectful, attentive, admiring. That had been the beginning!
Presently she, who had never before seen him in Levenford, for the good reason that he had seldom come there, began to see him frequently in the streets. They were, in fact, always encountering each other, and although he had never had the opportunity to speak, he always smiled and saluted her, cheerfully yet deferentially. She began to love that gay spontaneous smile, to look for the jaunty set of his shoulders, to desire the eager radiance of his glance. Sometimes she discerned him with a group of the hardier and more intrepid spirits of Levenford standing at the newly opened ice-cream saloon of Bertorelli's, and perceived with awe that these bold striplings accepted
