Two.
“Seeing the door open, sir,” said Big James cheerfully, through the narrow doorway of the cubicle, “I stepped in to see as it was no one unlawful.”
“Did I leave the side door open?” Edwin murmured. It was surprising even to himself, how forgetful he was at times, he with his mania for orderliness!
Big James was in his best clothes, and seemed, with his indestructible blandness, to be perfectly happy.
“I was just strolling up to have a look at the ox,” he added.
“Oh!” said Edwin. “Are they cooking it?”
“They should be, sir. But my fear is it may turn, in this weather.”
“I’ll come out with you,” said Edwin, enlivened.
He locked the desk, and hurriedly straightened a few things, and then they went out together, by Wedgwood Street and the Cock Yard up to the market-place. No breeze moved, and the heat was tremendous. And there at the foot of the Town Hall tower, and in its scanty shadow, a dead ox, slung by its legs from an iron construction, was frizzling over a great primitive fire. The vast flanks of the animal, all rich yellows and browns, streamed with grease, some of which fell noisily on the almost invisible flames, while the rest was ingeniously caught in a system of runnels. The spectacle was obscene, nauseating to the eye, the nose, and the ear, and it powerfully recalled to Edwin the legends of the Spanish Inquisition. He speculated whether he would ever be able to touch beef again. Above the tortured and insulted corpse the air quivered in large waves. Mr Doy, the leading butcher of Bursley, and now chief executioner, regarded with anxiety the operation which had been entrusted to him, and occasionally gave instructions to a myrmidon. Round about stood a few privileged persons, whom pride helped to bear the double heat; and farther off on the pavements, a thin scattered crowd. The sublime spectacle of an ox roasted whole had not sufficed to keep the townsmen in the town. Even the sages who had conceived and commanded this peculiar solemnity for celebrating the Jubilee of a Queen and Empress had not stayed in the borough to see it enacted, though some of them were to return in time to watch the devouring of the animal by the aged poor at a ceremonial feast in the evening.