268 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



woman tries, and just as she is finishing, " You're a 'cute 

 one, missus," he ejaculates, and she fails. Another tries, 

 and the showman has a watch ready to hand over, and 

 only at the last moment says excitedly (restoring the 

 watch quietly to its place) : " I thought you'd got it that 

 time. . . . Come along! It's the best game in the 

 world." Once more he repeats the trick himself without 

 looking, and then exclaims as he sweeps the discs 

 together : " It's a silly game, I call it ! " He is like the 

 preachers who show the stupid world how virtue is won : 

 he has a large audience, a large paunch, and many go 

 away disappointed. The crowd stares, and has the one 

 deep satisfaction of believing that the woman who travels 

 with him is not his wife. 



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 per- 

 former 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 



