Who doesn’t know the chilling feel of an English spring, or rather of a day at the turn of the year before there is any spring?  Our gala-day was a perfect specimen of the order—­a white frost succeeded by a bright sun, with an east wind, warming one side of the face and starving the other.  It was neither a day for fishing, nor hunting, nor coursing, nor anything but farming.  The country, save where there were a few lingering patches of turnips, was all one dingy drab, with abundant scalds on the undrained fallows.  The grass was more like hemp than anything else.  The very rushes were yellow and sickly.

Long before midday the whole country was in commotion.  The same sort of people commingled that one would expect to see if there was a balloon to go up, and a man to go down, or be hung at the same place.  Fine ladies in all the colours of the rainbow; and swarthy, beady-eyed dames, with their stalwart, big-calved, basket-carrying comrades; gentle young people from behind the counter; Dandy Candy merchants from behind the hedge; rough-coated dandies with their silver-mounted whips; and Shaggyford roughs, in their baggy, poacher-like coats, and formidable clubs; carriages and four, and carriages and pairs; and gigs and dog-carts, and Whitechapels, and Newport Pagnels, and long carts, and short carts, and donkey carts, converged from all quarters upon the point of attraction at Broom Hill.

If Farmer Scourgefield had made a mob, he could not have got one that would be more likely to do damage to his farm than this steeple-chase one.  Nor was the assemblage confined to the people of the country, for the Granddiddle Junction, by its connection with the great network of railways, enabled all patrons of this truly national sport to sweep down upon the spot like flocks of wolves; and train after train disgorged a generous mixture of sharps and flats, commingling with coatless, baggy-breeched vagabonds, the emissaries most likely of the Peeping Toms and Infallible Joes, if not the worthies themselves.

‘Dear, but it’s a noble sight!’ exclaimed Viney to Watchorn as they sat on their horses, below a rickety green-baize-covered scaffold, labelled, ‘GRAND STAND; admission, Two-and-sixpence,’ raised against Scourgefield’s stack-yard wall, eyeing the population pouring in from all parts.  ’Dear, but it’s a noble sight!’ said he, shading the sun from his eyes, and endeavouring to identify the different vehicles in the distance.  ’Yonder’s the ‘bus comin’ again,’ said he, looking towards the station, ’loaded like a market-gardener’s turnip-waggon.  That’ll pay,’ added he, with a knowing leer at the landlord of the Hen Angel, Newington Butts.  ’And who have we here, with the four horses and sky-blue flunkeys?  Jawleyford, as I live!’ added he, answering himself; adding, ’The beggar had better pay me what he owes.’