"Nay, ye needna' stop!" shouted Jock.
In an instant he had leapt easily up into the van, and was seated by her side therein on the children's stool.
"That's a hat—to travel in!" observed Mrs Clowes.
Jock removed the hat, examined it lovingly and replaced it.
"I couldn't ha' left it behind," said he, with a sigh, and continued rapidly in another voice: "Missis, we'n seen a pretty good lot o' each other this wik, and yet ye slips off o'this'n, without saying good-bye, nor a word about yer soul!"
Mrs Clowes heaved her enormous breast and shook the reins.
"I've had my share of trouble," she remarked mysteriously.
"Tell me about it, missis!"
And lo! in a moment, lured on by his smile, she was telling him quite familiarly about the ailments of her younger children, the escapades of her unmarried daughter aged fifteen, the surliness of one of her sons-in-law, the budding dishonesty of the other, the perils of infant life, and the need of repainting the big van and getting new pictures for the front of the booth. Indeed, all the worries of a queen of the road!
"And I'm so fat!" she said, "and yet I'm not forty, and shan't be for two year—and me a grandmother!"