Certain objects were against the railings of the church, objects neither
beautiful nor necessary; Brightly and his mongrel, hungry and
business-like as ever. They occupied very little space, and yet they
were in the way, principally because they were not pleasant to look
upon, being rather like heaps of refuse which the street-cleaners had
overlooked. Brightly was not there for the fun of the thing. He did not
know the meaning of such words as holiday and pleasure. Had any one
given him five shillings, and told him to go and enjoy himself, he would
not have known what to do. Both he and Ju were thinner, though that was
only interesting as a physiological fact. Brightly held up his
ridiculous head and sniffed continually. Ju did the same. The atmosphere
was redolent of sage and onions; and they were trying to feed upon it.
"Trade be cruel dull," muttered Brightly.
Ju did not acknowledge the remark. She had heard it so often, or words
to the same effect, that she deemed it unnecessary to respond with a
tail-wag. Besides, that sort of thing required energy, and Ju had none
to spare. She was wondering, if she followed up that wonderful odour,
whether she would obtain gratuitous goose at the other end.
"Tie-clips, penny each. Dree for duppence. Butiful pipes, two a penny,"
sang Brightly; but his miserable voice was drowned by the roundabouts
and megaphones.
Brightly was celebrating the general holiday by exchanging one form of
labour for another. It would have been useless to follow his usual
calling of purveyor of rabbit-skins that day, so he had become for the
time being a general merchant. He had obtained a trayful of small goods
on credit. Brightly had one fault, a grave one in business; he was
honest. So far he had sold nothing. He was merely demonstrating the
marvellous purchasing powers of a penny. It never occurred to him that
he was opposing his miserable little trayful of rubbish to all the
booths and pleasures of the great fair. Tie-clips and clay-pipes were
all he had to offer in competition with attractions which had delighted
kings and princes, if the honesty of the showmen could be accepted as
advertised. Even the fat woman admitted that royal personages had
pinched her legs. If Brightly had followed the fat lady's example, and
declared in a loud enough voice that autocrats smoked nothing but his
clay-pipes, and kept their decorations in place with his tie-clips, he
might have acquired many pennies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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