the threshold was not flush with the pavement, but rose a couple of inches and then fell again, a very trap to the toe of the unwary.  Many had no glass at all, but were open, like a butcher’s or fishmonger’s.  Those that had glass were so restricted for space that, rich as they might be within in the good things of the earth, they could make no ‘display.’  All the genius of a West-end shopman could not have made an artistic arrangement in that narrow space and in that bad light; for, though so small below, the houses rose high, and the street being so narrow the sunshine rarely penetrated into it.

But mean as a metropolitan shopman might have thought the spot, the business done there was large, and, more than that, it was genuine.  The trade of a country market-town, especially when that market-town, like Woolbury, dates from the earliest days of English history, is hereditary.  It flows to the same store and to the same shop year after year, generation after generation, century after century.  The farmer who walks into the saddler’s here goes in because his father went there before him.  His father went in because his father dealt there, and so on farther back than memory can trace.  It might almost be said that whole villages go to particular shops.  You may see the agricultural labourers’ wives, for instance, on a Saturday leave the village in a bevy of ten or a dozen, and all march in to the same tradesman.  Of course in these latter days speculative men and ‘co-operative’ prices, industriously placarded, have sapped and undermined this old-fashioned system.  Yet even now it retains sufficient hold to be a marked feature of country life.  To the through traffic, therefore, had to be added the steady flow of customers to the shops.

On a market-day like this there is, of course, the incessant entry and exit of carts, waggons, traps, gigs, four-wheels, and a large number of private carriages.  The number of private carriages is, indeed, very remarkable, as also the succession of gentlemen on thoroughbred horses—­a proof of the number of resident gentry in the neighbourhood, and of its general prosperity.  Cart-horses furbished up for sale, with straw-bound tails and glistening skins; ‘baaing’ flocks of sheep; squeaking pigs; bullocks with their heads held ominously low, some going, some returning, from the auction yard; shouting drovers; lads rushing hither and thither; dogs barking; everything and everybody crushing, jostling, pushing through the narrow street.  An old shepherd, who has done his master’s business, comes along the pavement, trudging thoughtful and slow, with ashen staff.  One hand is in his pocket, the elbow of the arm projecting; he is feeling a fourpenny-piece, and deliberating at which ‘tap’ he shall spend it.  He fills up the entire pavement, and stolidly plods on, turning ladies and all into the roadway; not from intentional rudeness, but from sheer inability to perceive that he is causing inconvenience.