We craned our necks, and, stooping low, saw beneath the vehicle a parasitic square box like a huge barnacle fixed to the bottom of the van. A box about four feet by two. The door of it was open, and Parker's bedfellows—two iron buckets and a sack of potatoes—stood confessed.
“Oh yes—very nice,” we murmured.
“Oh, it's awfully jolly!” said the host-in-himself.
We looked at Parker, who was peeling potatoes on the off-shaft—Parker, six feet two, with a soldier's bearing—and we drifted off into thought.
“And who drives?” we asked, with an intelligent interest.
“Oh, Parker. And we do all the rest, you know.”
It was seven o'clock in the evening when we joined the caravan, in a stackyard on the outskirts of an Eastern county town.
“That's 'im—that's Lord George Sanger,” was said of the writer by one of the crowd of small boys assembled at the stackyard gate. A travelling menagerie and circus was advertised in a somewhat “voyant” manner on the town walls, and a fancied resemblance to the aristocratic manager thereof accredited us with an honourable connection in the enterprise.
“When do you open?” inquired an intelligent spectator, anxious to show savoir faire.
“See small handbills,” replied the host-in-himself, with equal courtesy.