... Upon seeing a photograph of girls boxing, a woman remarked:—
“No, I don’t like to see women boxing, it’s too much like men. Women should be women, and men should be men, I think.”
... “Yes, if I had more money I should buy a bicycle. I know where there’s a good secondhand one I can buy for seven-and-six, but I can’t afford it.”
... “I reckon some of the newspapers make a lot o’ money, why I heard this morning of a man as buys four newspapers a day!”
The sound of the distant church clock striking the hour of ten was the signal for parting salutations.
“Kushti rarde!”
“Kushti rarde, my Rye!”
A quarter of an hour later and not a sound broke the silence of the fair ground,—a lull before the storm,—for on the morrow all would be bustle and noise and other evidence of a determination to “make good” while the opportunity lasted.
On the morning after the fair, by ten o’clock, no vestige of caravan, tent or gypsy was to be seen,—otherwise, additional rent would have been charged,—scarcely a sign was visible of the numerous fires that had been there on the previous night, for most of these had been made in large iron baskets, cylindrical iron containers some three feet or so in height, or similar receptacles, in order that the fire should not be in actual contact with the herbage, or a fine for burning the grass would have been added to the rent for the ground; one fire I had noticed was in a galvanized bath raised upon bricks from the ground.
The caravans, or as the gypsies frequently term them, living wagons, are most interesting structures; they vary greatly in design, build and fittings, and may cost anything between a few pounds and several hundreds. Some of the travelling showmen appear to spare no expense in the general “get up” of their homes, and while a liking for a kind of barbaric splendour is not uncommon, the interior fittings of a few of the best class of these portable houses are elaborate and costly, if not exactly palatial, and it must be conceded to the gypsy,—well-to-do or otherwise,—that in constructing his house on the common-sense lines which are the outcome of experience he succeeds in solving the problem of a house on wheels that will fulfil all reasonable, or even extraordinary demands, far better than do the designers of some of the touring vans one occasionally sees.