“And give me a pint,” said Jock, desperately.

They all sat down familiarly.  That a mother should take her children into a public-house and give them beer, and on a Sunday of all days, and immediately after a sermon!  That a local preacher should go direct from the vestry to the gin-palace and there drink ale with a strolling player!  These phenomena were simply and totally inconceivable!  And yet Jock was in presence of them, assisting at them, positively acting in them!  And in spite of her enormities, Mrs Clowes still struck him as a most agreeable, decent, kindly, motherly woman—­quite apart from her handsomeness.  And her offspring, each hidden to the eyes behind a mug, were a very well-behaved lot of children.

“It does me good,” said Mrs Clowes, quaffing.  “And ye need summat to keep ye up in these days!  We did Belphegor and The Witch and a harlequinade last night.  And not one of these children got to bed before half after midnight.  But I was determined to have ’em at chapel this morning.  And not sorry I am I went!  Eh, mester, what a Virginius you’d ha’ made!  I never heard preaching like it—­not as I’ve heard much!”

“And you’ll never hear anything like it again, missis,” said Jock, “for I’ve preached my last sermon.”

“Nay, nay!” Mrs Clowes deprecated.

“I’ve preached my last sermon,” said Jock again.  “And if I’ve saved a soul wi’ it, missis...!” He looked at her steadily and then drank.

“I won’t say as ye haven’t,” said Mrs Clowes, lowering her eyes.

VII

Rather less than a week later, on a darkening night, a van left the town of Bursley by the Moorthorne Road on its way to Axe-in-the-Moors, which is the metropolis of the wild wastes that cut off northern Staffordshire from Derbyshire.  This van was the last of Mrs Clowes’s caravanserai, and almost the last to leave the Fair.  Owing to popular interest in the events of Jock-at-a-Venture’s public career, in whose meshes Mrs Clowes had somehow got caught, the booth of Mrs Clowes had succeeded beyond any other booth, and had kept open longer and burned more naphtha and taken far more money.  The other vans of the stout lady’s enterprise (there were three in all) had gone forward in advance, with all her elder children and her children-in-law and her grandchildren, and the heavy wood and canvas of the booth.  Mrs Clowes, transacting her own business herself, from habit, invariably brought up the rear of her procession out of a town; and sometimes her leisurely manner of settling with the town authorities for water, ground-space and other necessary com-modities, left her several miles behind her tribe.