'Cuthbert, I wish you were going too,' I said just before we started.
'I should like well enough to go to Morechester,' he answered, stretching himself, 'but I'd rather not see any more schoolmasters.'
Market day at Morechester! The busiest and most stirring scene I had ever beheld.
A long sunny street stretching up a hill, built of irregular houses,—old and new, tall and short, brown and grey and red,—high houses with square windows and green shutters,—short houses, having high-pitched roofs, carved wooden balconies, and queer-shaped windows overhanging the roof; here and there a gilt weathercock flashing in the sun; oaken pillars supporting the jutting-out upper storey of some quaint old house; shop windows full of gorgeous coloured stuffs; the grey town hall, rich with ancient sculpture, standing back within its own railings; bright light, and black shadows lying across the uneven pavement. This, then, was a town.
Further on, the street widened into a sunlit market-place, and there an ever-shifting crowd came and went, bought and sold and bargained, round the old market cross.
What a noise there was! Farmers were riding up the street in twos and threes; their scarlet-cloaked wives jogged along laden with baskets of eggs and fresh butter; clattering carts, horses for sale were being trotted up and down, loud voices talking all at once.
Above all this there floated suddenly the music of airy chimes, followed by three slow deep strokes.
'Three by the Minster clock,' said Master Caleb.
The house we stopped at was close to the great towered church, which seemed to overshadow it and push it into the corner. It was a little low house, with dormer windows in a thatched roof, standing further back than its neighbours, and quite out of the reach of any stray sunbeams that found their way over the Minster roof.
Master Caleb rang a jangling bell, and as we stood waiting, whispered hurriedly, 'Make your bow, Willie, and don't speak unless you are spoken to.'