Page:Fletcher--Where Highways Cross.djvu/21

 cymbals and the blowing of horns and trumpets.

"What's that?" asked the woman.

"It's the stattits, missis," said the waggoner. "Sicaster stattits, and that's the music of the shows and the wild beasts and such like."

"What are the stattits?"

"Lord love us, why, the stattits is when all the country-folk come to be hired! There's rare doings in the Market-Place, I'll lay a penny. Fat women, and real giants, and men turned to stone, and such things as them. But here we are at the Cross-Keys, and I'm going no further at present, missis," said the waggoner.

He helped his companion to alight at the door of a little inn which stood at the entrance to a large open space filled at that moment by a bustling throng of people who elbowed and jostled each other as they moved from one show to another. The woman stood on the pavement and looked somewhat helplessly about her. The waggoner tied up his reins to