Elsewhere Mrs. Lintern and Mrs. Baskerville walked together. Their hearts were not in the fair, but they spoke of the pending marriage and hoped that a happy union was in store for Ned and Cora.
The young couple themselves tasted such humble delights as the fair could offer, but Cora's pleasure was represented by the side glances of other girls, and she regarded the gathering as a mere theatre for her own display. Ned left her now and again and then returned. Each time he came back he lifted his hat to her and exhibited some new sign of possession.
Cora affected great airs and a supercilious play of eyebrow that impressed the other young women. She condescended to walk round the fair and regarded this perambulation as a triumph, until the man who sold watches marked her among his listeners, observed her vanity, and raised a laugh at her expense. Then she lost her temper and declared her wish to depart. She was actually going when there came up Milly and her husband, Rupert Baskerville.
Ned whispered to his sister-in-law to save the situation if possible, and Milly with some tact and some good fortune managed to do so.
Cora smoothed her ruffled feathers and joined the rest of the family at the inn. There all partook of the special ordinary furnished on this great occasion to the countryside.
In another quarter Thomas Gollop, Joe Voysey and their friends took pleasure after their fashion. Every man won some sort of satisfaction from the fair and held his day as well spent.
Perhaps few could have explained what drew them thither or kept them for many hours wandering up and down, now drinking, now watching the events of the fair, now eating, now drinking again. But so the day passed with most among them, and not until evening darkened did the mist thicken into rain and seriously damp the proceedings.
Humphrey Baskerville, well pleased with his sales and even better pleased with the trivial incident of the bullock, went his way homeward and was glad to be gone. His state of mind was such that he gave alms to two mournful men limping slowly on crutches into Princetown. Each of these wounded creatures had lost a leg, and one lacked an arm also. They dragged along a little barrel-organ that played hymns, and their faces were thin, anxious, hunger-bitten.
These men stopped Mr. Baskerville, but not to beg. They desired to know the distance yet left to traverse before they reached the fair.
"We set out afore light from Dousland, but we didn't know what a terrible road 'twas," said one. "You see, with but a pair o' legs between us, we can't travel very fast."