‘Come and make your selection,’ said Edgar, pointing to one of the biggest and grandest stalls in the open place near the famous clock-tower, where the cock was to crow, and the figure of grim old Time was to turn his glass, and all manner of wonderful things were to happen just before the striking of the hour. This stall showed the best array of silver trinketry which they had seen yet, and the country people were clustered about it, gazing at the bright new silver, and a good deal at golden-haired Daphne in her creamy Indian silk gown, a radiant figure under a creamy silk umbrella. ‘Choose the prettiest, Daphne, and wear it for my sake,’ said Edgar, with his portly leather purse in his hand, an English pigeon offering himself up to be plucked. ‘_Combien?_’ he asked, rather proud of his readiness with a foreign language, pointing to the handsomest of the chains, a duster of many slender chainlets, about three yards long. ‘_Wie viel?_’ asked Daphne, with a compassionate glance at her affianced. ‘It is ver sheep,’ answered the vendor, showing a disgusting familiarity with the English tongue. ‘Gut und sheep, sehr schön, ver prurty, funf pound Englees.’ ‘Five pounds!’ screamed Daphne: ‘why, I thought it would be about five shillings! Pray come away, Mr. Turchill. They see we are English.’ She turned from the stall indignantly, and marched across to look at the fountain, where the gigantic figure of an ogre, in the act of dropping a child into the yawning cavern of his jaws, stands out against the tall white houses, balconied, jalousied, like a bit of Parisian boulevard made picturesque by a dash of Swiss quaintness. The vegetables and the pottery stalls, and the fluttering cotton handkerchiefs were grouped all about the fountain, a confusion of vivid colour. ‘That is something like a statue,’ cried Daphne, looking up unblinkingly at the giant grinning at her through a warm hazy atmosphere. ‘A dear old thing which recalls the fairy-tales of one’s childhood, instead of a stupid old Anglo-Indian general, whom nobody ever heard of, riding a tame old horse. Why don’t we have Kindlifressers and other fairy tale statues in the London streets? They would make London ever so much livelier.’ Here Edgar came after her, carrying a small box neatly papered and tied up, which he put into her hand. ‘May you never wear heavier fetters than these!’ he said, having composed the little speech as he came along. ‘What,’ she exclaimed, ‘did you actually buy the chain after all? Well, I do despise you. Could you not see that the man was swindling you?’ ‘He was not so bad as you think. I only gave him three pounds for the chain, and I believe it is worth as much as that. I should think it cheap at thirty if you were pleased with it,’ he added, with homely tenderness.