“Then we may have it, father?”
“Do as you like, do as you like. Don’t trouble, there’s a good boy;” and he turned round to the fire again without having half realised the situation.
But Roger and Gabriel realised it fully, and the next morning between five and six o’clock, while it was still all grey, and cold, and misty, they set forth triumphantly on their way to market with the pigs carefully netted over in the cart. Through the lanes, strewn thickly with the brown and yellow leaves of late autumn, up the steep chalk hill and over the bare bleak downs, the old horse pounded steadily along with the two grave little boys and their squeaking black companions.
There was not much conversation on the road, for, although Gabriel was an excitable and talkative boy, he was now so fully impressed by the importance of the undertaking that he was unusually silent, and Roger was naturally rather quiet and deliberate.
They had to drive between five and six miles to Donnington, and at last, as they wound slowly down a long hill, they saw the town and the cathedral towers lying at their feet.
They were a good deal too early, for in their excitement they had started much too soon.
“But that is all the better,” said Roger, “because we shall get a good place.”
Presently the pen, made of four hurdles, was ready, the pigs safely in it, and the boys took their station in front of it and waited events.
Donnington market was a large one, well attended by all the fanners for miles round; gradually they came rattling up in their carts and gigs, or jogging along on horseback, casting shrewd glances at the various beasts which had already been driven in. Some of the men knew the boys quite well, and greeted them with, “Fine day, sir,” and a broad stare of surprise.
By the time the cathedral clock had sounded nine the market was in full swing.