“From ... the High Bridge the Kennet now showed like a mirror reflecting on its icy surface into a peculiar broad and bluish shine, the arch of lamps surmounting the graceful airy bridge and the twinkling lights that glanced here and there, from boat or barge or wharf, or from some uncurtained window that overhung the river.” But the chief beauty of the old town was to be seen in summer time on a Saturday (market-day) at noon. “The old market-place, always picturesque from the irregular architecture of the houses, and the beautiful Gothic church by which it is terminated, is then all alive with the busy hum of traffic.... Noise of every sort is to be heard, from the heavy rumbling of so many loaded waggons over the paved market-place to the crash of crockery ware in the narrow passage of Princes Street. One of the noisiest and prettiest places is the Piazza at the end of St. Nicholas Church appropriated by long usage to the female vendors of fruit and vegetables.” The butter market was at the back of the market proper, “where respectable farmers’ wives and daughters sold eggs, butter and poultry.” Here too “straw-hats, caps and ribbons were sold, also pet rabbits and guinea-pigs, together with owls and linnets in cages.” [Illustration: DR. MITFORD’S HOUSE IN THE LONDON ROAD] Among the odd characters who turned up on the occasion of markets or fairs Miss Mitford mentions a certain rat-catcher by name Sam Page “whose own appearance was as venomous as that of his retinue,” and “told his calling almost as plainly as the sharp heads of the ferrets which protruded from the pockets of his dirty jean jacket, or the bunch of dead rats with which he was wont to parade the streets of B. on a market-day.” But before he had taken to this business, she says, he had tried many other callings, amongst them those of “a barrel-organ grinder, the manager of a celebrated company of dancing dogs, and the leader of a bear and a very accomplished monkey. Suddenly he reappeared one day at B. fair as showman of the Living Skeleton, and also a performer [himself] in the Tragedy of the Edinburgh Murders, as exhibited every half-hour at the price of a penny to each person.” Sam confessed that he liked acting of all things, especially tragedy; “it was such fun.” Of the period with which we are dealing Mary writes: “I was a girl at the time—a very young girl, and, what is more to the purpose, a very shy one, so that I mixed in none of the gaieties of the place; but speaking from observation and recollection I can fairly say that I never saw any society more innocently cheerful.” She tells us of “the old ladies and their tea visits, the gentlemen and their whist club, and the merry Christmas parties with their round games and their social suppers, their mirth and their jests.”