THE END OF SUMMER 269 



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. 



On the open heath behind the stalls they are selling 

 horses by auction. Enormous cart-horses plunge out of the 

 groups of men and animals and carry a little man sus- 

 pended from their necks; stout men in grey gaiters and 

 black hats hobble after. Or more decorously the animals 



