“Here's this tiresome Fair come round again,” said Mrs. Cole.
“Wicked!” said Aunt Amy, with an envious shudder. “Satan finds work, indeed, in this town.”
“I don't suppose it's worse than anywhere else,” said Mrs. Cole.
On the late afternoon of the day before the opening, Jeremy, on his way to Mr. Somerset's, caught the tailend of Wombwell's Circus Procession moving, in misty splendour, across the market.
He could see but little, although he stood on the pedestal of a lamp-post; but Britannia, rocking high in the air, flashing her silver sceptre in the evening air, and followed by two enormous and melancholy elephants, caught his gaze. Strains of a band lingered about him. He entered Mr. Somerset's in a frenzy of excitement, but he said nothing. He felt that Mr. Somerset would laugh at him.
He returned to his home that night haunted by Britannia. He ate Britannia for his supper; he had Britannia for his dreams; and he greeted Rose as Britannia the next morning when she called him. Early upon that day there were borne into the heart of the house strains of the Fair. It was no use whatever to close the windows, lock the doors, and read Divinity. The strains persisted, a heavenly murmur, rising at moments into a muffled shriek or a jumbling shout, hanging about the walls as a romantic echo, dying upon the air a chastened wail. “No use for Mr. Cole to say:
“We must behave as though the Fair was not.”
For a whole week it would be there, and everyone knew it.
Jeremy did not mean to be disobedient, but after that glimpse of Britannia he knew that he would go.