One treat only she declined.  The miller’s man would have paid for a shilling portrait of her, but she refused to be taken.

The afternoon was wearing away, when Sal caught sight of some country bumpkins upon a stage, who were preparing to grin through horse-collars against each other for the prize of a hat.  As she had never seen or heard of the entertainment, George explained it to her.

It was a contest in which the ugliest won the prize.  Only the widest-mouthed, most grotesque-looking clowns of the place attempted to compete; and he won who, besides being the ugliest by nature, could “grin” and contort his features in the mode which most tickled the fancy of the beholders.  George had once competed himself, and had only failed to secure the hat because his nearest rival could squint as well as grin; and he was on the point of boasting of this, but on second thoughts he kept the fact to himself.

Very willing indeed he was to escort his companion to a show in the open air for which nothing was charged, and they plunged valiantly into the crowd.  The crowd was huge, but George’s height and strength stood him in good stead, and he pushed on, and dragged Sal with him.  There was some confusion on the stage.  A nigger, with a countenance which of itself moved the populace to roars of laughter, had applied to be allowed to compete.  Opinions were divided as to whether it would be fair to native talent, whilst there was a strong desire to see a face that in its natural condition was “as good as a play,” with the additional attractions of a horse-collar and a grin.

The country clowns on the stage fumed, and the nigger grinned and bowed, and the crowd yelled, and surged, and swayed, and weak people got trampled, and everybody was tightly squeezed, and the Cheap Jack’s wife was alarmed, and withdrew her hand from George’s arm, and begged him to hold her up, which he gallantly did, she meanwhile clinging with both hands to his smock.

As to the hunchback, it is hardly necessary to say that he did not get very far into the crowd, and when his wife and George returned, laughing gayly, they found him standing outside, with a sulky face.  “Look here, missus,” said he; “you’re a enjoying of yourself, but I’m not.  You’ve got the blunt, so just hand over a few coppers, and I’ll get a pint at the King’s Arms.”

Sal began fumbling to find her pocket, but when she found it, she gave a shriek, and turned it inside out.  It was empty!

If the miller’s man had enjoyed himself before, he was not to be envied now.  The Cheap Jack’s wife poured forth her woes in a continuous stream of complaint.  She minutely described the purse which she had lost, the age and quality of her dress, and the impossibility of there being a hole in her pocket.  She took George’s arm once more, and insisted upon revisiting every stall and show where they had been, to see if her purse had been found.  Up and down George toiled with her, wiping his face and feeling that he looked like a fool, as at each place in turn they were told that they might as well “look for a needle in a bottle of hay,” and that pickpockets were as plenty at a mop as blackberries in September.