"What a burning shame!" I said to Jim, "to shame the poor folk so." "Not a bit on it," laughed Jim. "It's all in the fun o' the fair. They'll plaster their wounded feelings for 'em wi' lashings o' ale. I expect it's a put up job." And so we went along the highway, past the stalls where nuts, and brandysnap, and humbugs, and peppermint, and all the sorts of goodstuffs you can think of made your money burn in your pocket; past the Aunt Sallies and cocoanut shies--three shies a penny--and the weighing machines and thumping machines--I remembered that last Wakes Jim, being pressed to try his strength, had struck so shrewd a buffet that the indicator whirled all over the brazen face of the dial, and for anything I know is whirling yet, and sent the machine itself staggering across the road--past the pea saloons, and past the booths of the bearded woman and the learned pig, aye, even past Tom Wild's great show, despite the allurements of an elderly-young lady, whom only two years ago I had counted as fairer than Venus herself, if indeed she was not that goddess incarnate, but upon whom I now looked with cold and critical eye as she paced the platform in front of the booth in pink tights and skirts of gauze that had once been white. "A brazen hussy," I heard many an honest mother comment to her admiring daughter, "'oo ought to be ashamed o' hersen, barein' her legs i' that fashion for all the world to see." And so in merry fit we came at length to the Church Inn at Saddleworth, before whose hospitable doors the rush-cart came to a halt, the lads threw down their stangs right gladly, wiped their streaming brows on their coat sleeves, and called lustily for quarts of ale. Tim o' Tame Water pouched the contents of the collecting-tin, and made his way within doors to change the coppers into less bulky coinage and to apportion the spoil among those who had furnished forth the cart. Jim looked on, somewhat gloomily, I thought. "Aw wish aw had yet aw'm fain aw didn't," he vouchsafed. "Wish you'd what?" I queried.