In a hopeless, resigned sort of way, the little boy was sobbing. It was as if he felt that he was doomed by some inexorable fate to whirl round for ever and ever with the tarnished horses and chariots, the dingy, patient pony, and the old cracked tunes. "It is not long," said the invisible cicerone, "since that little boy was stolen from the mortals. He still can weep." Master Nathaniel felt a sudden tightening in his throat. Poor little boy! Poor little lonely boy! What was it he reminded him of? Something painful, and very near his heart. Round and round trudged the pony, round and round went the hidden musical-box, grinding out its thin, blurred tunes. Why did she cock her pretty blue eye At the lad with the silver buckles, When the penniless lad who was handsome and spry Got nought but a rap on his knuckles? These vulgar songs, though faded, were not really old. Nevertheless, to Master Nathaniel, they were the oldest songs in existence--sung by the Morning Stars when all the world was young. For they were freighted with his childhood, and brought the memory, or, rather, the tang, the scent, of the solemn innocent world of children, a world sans archness, sans humour, sans vulgarity, where they had sounded as pure and silvery as a shepherd's pipe. Where the little charmer with her puce bow, and the scheming hussy who had cocked her blue eye had been own sisters to the pretty fantastic ladies of the nursery rhymes, like them walking always to the accompaniment of tinkling bells and living on frangipane and sillabubs of peaches and cream; and whose gestures were stylised and actions preposterous--nonsense actions that needed no explanation. While mothers-in-law, shrewish wives, falling in love--they were just pretty words like brightly-coloured beads, strung together without meaning. As Master Nathaniel listened, he knew that other people would have heard other tunes--whatever tunes through the milkman's whistle, or the cracked fiddle of a street musician, or the voices of young sparks returning from the tavern at midnight, the Morning Stars may have happened to sing in their own particular infancy. Oh, you little charmer with your pretty puce bow, I'll tell mamma if you carry on so! Round and round whirled the tarnished horses and chariots with their one pathetic little rider; round and round trudged the pony--the little dusty, prosaic pony. Master Nathaniel rubbed his eyes and looked round; he felt as if after a dive he were slowly rising to the surface of the water. The fair seemed to be coming alive--the silence had changed into a low murmur. And now it was swelling into the mingled din of chattering voices, lowing cows, grunting pigs, blasts from tin trumpets, hoarse voices of cheap-jacks praising their wares--all the noises, in short, that one connects with an ordinary fair.