At the upper end of the grove is the gaudy green and gold and scarlet-painted and embossed entrance to the bioscope, raised a few feet above the crowd. On the platform before the door stand two painted men and a girl. The girl has a large nose, loose mouth and a ready, but uneasy, discontented smile as if she knows that her paint is an imperfect refuge from the gaze of the crowd; as if she knows that her eyes are badly darkened, and her white stockings soiled, and her legs too thin under her short skirt, and her yellow hair too stiff. She lounges wearily with a glib clown who wears a bristly fringe of sandy hair round his face, which tickles her and causes roars of laughter when he aims at a kiss. The other performer is a contortionist, a small slender man in dirty, ill-fitting scarlet jacket with many small brass buttons, dirty brown trousers criss-crossed by yellow stripes; his hands in his pockets; his snub nose deep pink, and his lean face made yet leaner and more dismal by a thin streak of red paint on either cheek. His melancholy seems natural, yet adds to his vulgarity because he forsakes it so quickly when he smirks and turns away if the girl exposes her legs too much. For she turns a somersault with the clown at intervals; or doubles herself back to touch the ground first with her yellow hair and at last with her head; or is lifted up by the clown and, supported on the palm of one of his hands, hangs dangling in a limp bow, her face yet gaunter and sadder upside down with senseless eyes and helpless legs. The crowd watch--looking sideways at one another to get their cue--some with unconscious smiles entranced, but most of them grimly controlling the emotions roused by the girl or the contortionist or the clown and the thought of their unstable life. A few squirt water languidly or toss confetti. Others look from time to time to see whether any one in the county dare in broad daylight enter the booth for “gentlemen only,” at the door of which stands a shabby gaudy woman of forty-five grinning contemptuously. Up and down moves the crowd--stiffly dressed children carrying gay toys or bowls of goldfish or cocoanuts--gypsy children with scarves, blue or green or red--lean, tanned, rough-necked labourers caged in their best clothes, except one, a labourer of well past middle age, a tall straight man with a proud grizzled head, good black hat of soft felt low in the crown, white scarf, white jacket, dark-brown corduroys above gleaming black boots.