She turned back towards the market place, for there is nothing more gloomy than an empty railway station, resolving to buy what she needed and then go home without delay.
“Loneliness is terrible, and I have not got a friend in the world. The worst fate which can befall a human being is to be born a young lady,” and meeting the gaze of a handsome gipsy with gold earrings, she added: “I can see that I do not attract him; he does not care for young ladies, and he is wise. We are an unhealthy, artificial breed; his women are better; they smell of tallow and wood ashes, and have the spirit and the health of mares.”
Anne bought her drawing-pins and decided to go home, but first she would have a cup of tea, and threading her way past a steam plough with seven shares, and through a series of galvanized iron cisterns, at which a group of farmers were gazing with intellectual doubt written on their faces, she crossed the market place and went into White’s. The turmoil of the fair had not penetrated inside the confectioner’s shop, and she would have thought that they had no knowledge of it there if it were not that a greater primness reigned, and that the very gingerbread seemed weary of the flesh. Anne sipped her cup of tea with distaste, asking herself what the young ladies behind the counter would have said if she had given way to her desires, and they had seen her mounted on an ostrich.... Did they suffer from such temptations themselves?
She had almost finished her cup of tea when the door opened and a little girl came in, followed by a short, thick-set, white-bearded man of sixty. It was Rachel, her favourite, and her father, Mr. Sotheby. Rachel smiled, and all Anne’s depression was laid aside; even the tea, tasting of wet boots, seemed changed by the pleasure of their meeting.
“Well, Rachel, have you been enjoying yourself at the fair?” she asked, looking into the pale little face, framed in short dark curls. The child nodded her head quickly.
“Yes, Miss Dunnock, thank you very much. I have been on the switchback, and enjoyed seeing the fair very much.” Rachel’s voice was always a trifle stilted, her words always polite, and her sentiments always perfectly correct, but Anne noticed that on this occasion the child’s usual gaiety was lacking. A few words with the grocer were sufficient to explain the cause: Mr. Sotheby had brought Rachel into Linton to see the fair, he had taken her twice on the roundabout, but his business was waiting for him and must be done, and since he did not think it suitable to let the child go to the circus alone, he was leaving her at White’s, where she would keep warm.
“Come and choose yourself a cake, Rachel,” he said.
“May I take her to the circus, Mr. Sotheby?” asked Anne.
There could be no refusal, and the two friends set off at once, Rachel carrying the cheese-cake she had chosen, in her hand.
When the time came to meet Mr. Sotheby in the market place the two girls left the circus, and still under the spell of the wonders they had seen, it seemed as if they could never express sufficiently their admiration and their astonishment. The pink horse and the fair rider of which Maggie had spoken that morning, and the clowns, who had appeared so suddenly that one might have thought a shower of frogs had fallen into the ring after a thunderstorm, were discussed in detail, but best of all they had liked the handsome young man who had stood on his head on a trapeze, and who, without holding on with his hands, had swung rapidly from one side of the great roof of the circus to the other.