All the local oddities are sure to be at these fêtes. There is the harmless imbecile, who wanders about the roads with a peacock's feather in his battered old cap, and who talks to himself when he cannot find another listener; and there is the stalwart lady proprietor who farms her own land and knows as much about roots and beasts as the best of them. She is reported to have thrashed her man in her time, and is said to be a crack shot and the best roughrider for miles round. There is the ruined yeoman who came into a good property when he was a handsome young fellow with the ball at his foot, but who has drunk himself from affluence to penury, and from sturdy health to palsy and delirium tremens, yet who has always a kindly word from his betters, having been no man's enemy but his own, and even at his worst being a good fellow in a sort of way. There is the farmer who is supposed capable of buying up all the leaner gentry in a batch, but who, being a misogynist, lives by himself in his rambling old ruined Hall, with a hind to do the scullery maid's work, and never a petticoat about the place. There is the self-taught man of science whose quantities are shaky when he tells you the names of his treasures, but whose knowledge of local fossils, of rare plants, of concealed antiquities, is true so far as it goes, if of too great importance in his estimate of things; and side by side with him is the self-made poet, whose verses are not always easy to scan and whose thoughts are apt to express themselves mistily. These and more are sure to be at the fête bringing; their peculiarities as their quota, and giving that indescribable but pleasant local flavour which is half the interest of the thing.