But in this I was a moment too late; for just as I reached up my hand with the thirteen pence, and the grinning fellow on the platform bent forward with his mirror, I heard a coarser jest, a rush in the crowd, and two heads go crack! together like eggs. ’Twas two of Joan’s tormentors she had taken by the hair and served so: and dropping them the next instant had caught the Cheap Jack’s beard, as you might a bell rope, and wrench’d him head-foremost off his stand, my thirteen pence flying far and wide. Plump he fell into the crowd, that scatter’d on all hands as Joan pummelled him: and whack, whack! fell the blows on the poor idiot’s face, who scream’d for mercy, as though Judgment Day were come.
No one, for the minute, dared to step between them: and presently Joan looking up, with arm raised for another buffet, spied a poor Astrologer close by, in a red and yellow gown, that had been reading fortunes in a tub of black water beside him, but was now broken off, dismayed at the hubbub. To this tub she dragged the Cheap Jack and sent him into it with a round souse. The black water splashed right and left over the crowd. Then, her wrath sated, Joan faced the rest, with hands on hips, and waited for them to come on.
Not a word had she spoken, from first to last: but stood now with hot cheeks and bosom heaving. Then, finding none to take up her challenge, she strode out through the folk, and I after her, with the mirror in my hand; while the Cheap Jack picked himself out of the tub, whining, and the Astrologer wip’d his long white beard and soil’d robe.
Outside the throng was a carriage, stopp’d for a minute by this tumult, and a servant at the horses’ heads. By the look of it, ’twas the coach of some person of quality; and glancing at it I saw inside an old gentleman with a grave venerable face, seated. For the moment it flash’d on me I had seen him before, somewhere: and cudgell’d my wits to think where it had been. But a second and longer gaze assured me I was mistaken, and I went on down the street after Joan.
She was walking fast and angry; nor when I caught her up and tried to soothe, would she answer me but in the shortest words. Woman’s justice, as I had just learn’d, has this small defect—it goes straight enough, but mainly for the wrong object. Which now I proved in my own case.
“Where are you going, Joan?”
“To ‘Fifteen Balls’’ stable, for my horse.”
“Art not leaving the fair yet, surely!”
“That I be, tho’. Have had fairing enow—wi’ a man!”
Nor for a great part of the way home would she speak to me. But meeting, by Pound Scawens (a hamlet close to the road), with some friends going to the fair, she stopp’d for a while to chat with them, whilst I rode forward: and when she overtook me, her brow was clear again.