CHAPTER XIV.
MARYLLIS did not look back as she walked beside her grandfather slowly up the street, or she would have seen the company of relations watching them from the bow-window.
Iden went straight through the crowd without any hesitation on account of his age—angry as she was, Amaryllis feared several times lest the clumsy people should over-turn him, and tried her best to shield him. But he had a knack of keeping on his feet—the sort of knack you learn by skating—and did not totter much more than usual, despite the press.
The world gets on with very little amusement somehow. Here were two or three thousand people packed in the street, and all they had to enliven their festive gathering was the same old toys their fathers' fathers' fathers had set before them.
Rows of booths for the display of "fairings," gingerbread, nuts, cakes, brandy-balls, and sugar-plums stood in the gutter each side.
The "fairings" were sweet biscuits—they have been made every fair this hundred years.