“But by th’ time they’re cooked your supper’ll be late, I’m reckoning.”

“Them potatoes have naught to do with our supper,” said Mrs Clowes.  “They’re for to-morrow’s dinner.  There’ll be no time for peeling potatoes to-morrow.  Kezia!” She shrilled the name.

A slim little girl showed herself between the heavy curtains of the main tent of Mrs Clowes’s caravanserai.

“Bring Sapphira, too!”

“Those yours?” asked Jock.

“They’re mine,” said Mrs Clowes.  “And I’ve six more, not counting grandchildren and sons-in-law like.”

“No wonder you want a pailful of potatoes!” said Jock.

Kezia and Sapphira appeared in the gloom.  They might have counted sixteen years together.  They were dirty, tousled, graceful and lovely.

“Twins,” Jock suggested.

Mrs Clowes nodded.  “Off with this pail, now!  And mind you don’t spill the water.  Here, Kezia!  Take the knife.  And bring me the other pail.”

The children bore away the heavy pail, staggering, eagerly obedient.  Mrs Clowes lifted her mighty form from the stool, shook peelings from the secret places of her endless apron, and calmly sat down again.

“Ye rule ’em with a rod of iron, missis,” said Jock.

She smiled good-humouredly and shrugged her vast shoulders—­no mean physical feat.

“I keep ’em lively,” she said.  “There’s twelve of ’em in my lot, without th’ two babbies.  Someone’s got to be after ’em all the time.”

“And you not thirty-five, I swear!”

“Nay!  Ye’re wrong.”

Sapphira brought the other pail, swinging it.  She put it down with a clatter of the falling handle and scurried off.

“Am I now?” Jock murmured, interested; and, as it were out of sheer absent-mindedness, he turned the pail wrong side up, and seated himself on it with a calm that equalled the calm of Mrs Clowes.

It was now nearly dark.  The flares of the showmen were answering each other across the Fair-ground; and presently a young man came and hung one out above the railed platform of Mrs Clowes’s booth; and Mrs Clowes blinked.  From behind the booth floated the sounds of the confused chatter of men, girls and youngsters, together with the complaint of an infant.  A few yards away from Mrs Clowes was a truss of hay; a pony sidled from somewhere with false innocence up to this truss, nosed it cautiously, and then began to bite wisps from it.  Occasionally a loud but mysterious cry swept across the ground.  The sky was full of mystery.  Against the sky to the west stood black and clear the silhouette of the new Town Hall spire, a wondrous erection; and sticking out from it at one side was the form of a gigantic angel.  It was the gold angel which, from the summit of the spire, has now watched over Bursley for half a century, but which on that particular Friday had been lifted only two-thirds of the way to its final home.

Jock-at-a-Venture felt deeply all the influences of the scene and of the woman.  He was one of your romantic creatures; and for him the woman was magnificent.  Her magnificence thrilled.