Excepting, perhaps, with Prance. Prance showed no signs whatever of her discomfiture, but followed to the fair with George, impassive and silent as ever. As they were entering the bustle, and the little legs already began to dance to the drums, and the charmed eyes caught the first glimpse of the spangles and all the other enchantments, a dusty travelling carriage-and-four came bowling down the street, and stopped at the Bell Inn, which was situated opposite to the common. Such travelling equipages had become sufficiently rare to be almost a curiosity in the county, and both the maids turned to stare, utterly unsuspicious that it contained one who, as guardian, had all power over the heir of Alnwick.
The first show they entered (on the principle of keeping the best to the last) was a very sober sort of affair, and purporting to be "An Emporium of Foreign Curiosities." The admission was threepence, the trumpet was loud, and the showman was magnificent both in person and persuasion.
"I shall go into this," said Honour. "I should think you needn't be afraid of what you'd see inside," she added to Prance in tones, it must be confessed, of aggravation. "There's no dancing here."
Prance's only answer was to draw down the corners of her thin lips and walk off with George to a leviathan booth whose company were executing a complicated quadrille before it. Honour paid her threepence, disputed with the money-taker about admitting Benja for three-halfpence, that functionary protesting that there was no half-price for gentlemen's children, and went into the show.
Like many other shows, its interior did not realize the outward promise. There was a crocodile in stone, and a few more dead wonders, which Honour turned up her nose at, saying something about demanding back her money: but Benja's attention had become riveted by the pretty model of a church rising from the midst of green moss. It was white, and its coloured windows were ingeniously shown up by means of a light placed within it. It really was a pretty and conspicuous article in the dark booth, and Benja could not be moved from it. How little did Honour think that that sight was to exercise so terrible an influence on the unconscious child!
"Come along," she said, rather impatiently. "I could make you as good a one any day, Benja."
"How could you make it?" promptly asked Benja.
"With white paper and thin strips of wood for the frame. Master Benja, then! we shall have Prance going home and telling your mamma that we lost her on purpose. She's as deceitful as yonder crocodile."
"Couldn't you buy it for me, Honour?" returned Benja, not stirring a peg.
"Of course I couldn't," answered Honour. "What a little simpleton you must be, to ask it! The things here are not for sale; the folks get their living by showing them. And a fine set of worthless rubbish it is! Once for all, are you coming, Master St. John?"