It was every Thursday, the regular market-day, when the country people came in to sell and to buy. But Northclough was not a pretty, old-fashioned country town, such as you would very likely fancy from the mention of markets and country folk. Once, long ago, it had been a village, a rather lonely and out-of-the-way village, though never a pretty one. For it was up in the north, as its name tells, in a bare and cold part of the world, where the grass is never very brightly green, and the skies much more often grey than blue.
And now, as far as looks go, any way, it had changed from bad to worse. The village had grown into a smoky town, where there were lots of high chimneys, and constant sounds of machinery booming away, and railway trains shrieking and whistling in and out of the stations. There was no longer any ivy on the old church, which the oldest people could remember almost buried in it. And the new churches which had been built since, already looked old themselves—no stones could keep clean or fresh in such smoky grimy air.
But some of the old customs still lingered on, and one was the weekly market, which was held just outside the old church walls—the walls of the church-yard, I should say—every Thursday, just as it had been since the village first grew into a small market town, more than a hundred years ago. And what some people would have done without the pleasure and amusement of this market, I should be afraid to say. I mean some little people, the children of the vicar, who lived with their parents in a grey old house, as grey and old as the church itself, which stood at one side of the market place.
It was grey and grim outside, but inside the father and mother made it as bright and cheery as they could. In winter I think they managed this better than in summer, for good blazing fires do a great deal, especially of an evening when the curtains are drawn and the cold north wind, howling and blustering outside as if in a rage at not being able to get in, only makes the house seem still cosier. And one of the good things about the north is that coals are cheap and plentiful, so that though the vicar was not rich, there was no need to go without comfortable fires.
But in summer it was sometimes not easy to make the old house look cheerful. Very little sunshine could get in, for on two sides the neighbouring houses almost shut out the light. And the sun had hard work, persevering though he is, to get through the murky air—murky even in summer—that hangs like a curtain over what is called a "manufacturing town." Then there was no garden of any kind, as the new schools had been built on what was once the vicarage lawn, though after all I hardly think a garden would have been much good, and perhaps the children's nurse was right when she said:
"Better without it, 'twould only have been a trap for more soots and smuts, and it's hard enough to keep the pinafores clean for half-an-hour together as it is."
Nurse had come with their mother from the south, and she didn't take kindly to the greyness, and the smokiness, and the grimness at all. But she took very kindly to the babies, which was after all of more consequence.
There were four of them—they were "leaving off being babies" now, as little Ruth, the youngest but one, said indignantly, when some one spoke of her and Charlie in that disrespectful way. "Charlie's three and I'm four, and Pansy's nearly six, and Bob's seven past."