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“I think, my friend–” began the second remaining minister.

“Look at that good woman there!” cried Jock-at-a-Venture, interrupting him with a dramatic out-stretching of the right arm, as he pointed to a very stout but comely dame, who, seated on a three-legged stool, was calmly peeling potatoes in front of one of the more resplendent booths. “Look at that face! Is there no virtue in it? Is there no hope for salvation in it?”

“None,” Jock’s pastor replied mournfully. “That woman–her name is Clowes–is notorious. She has eight children, and she has brought them all up to her trade. I have made inquiries. The elder daughters are actresses and married to play-actors, and even the youngest child is taught to strut on the boards. Her troupe is the largest in the Midlands.”

Jock-at-a-Venture was certainly dashed by this information.

“The more reason,” said he, obstinately, “for saving her!… And all hers!”

The two ministers did not want her to be saved. They liked to think of the theatre as being beyond the pale. They remembered the time, before they were ordained, and after, when they had hotly desired to see the inside of a theatre and to rub shoulders with wickedness. And they took pleasure in the knowledge that the theatre was always there, and the wickedness thereof, and the lost souls therein. But Jock-at-a-Venture genuinely longed, in that ecstasy of his, for the total abolition of all forms of sin.

“And what would you do to save her, brother?” Jock’s pastor inquired coldly.

“What would I do? I’d go and axe her to come to chapel Sunday, her and hers. I’d axe her kindly, and I’d crack a joke with her. And I’d get round her for the Lord’s sake.”

Both ministers sighed. The same thought was in their hearts, namely, that brands plucked from the burning (such as Jock) had a disagreeable tendency to carry piety, as they had carried sin, to the most ridiculous and inconvenient lengths.

IV

“Those are bonny potatoes, missis!”

“Ay!” The stout woman, the upper part of whose shabby dress seemed to be subjected to considerable strains, looked at Jock carelessly, and then, attracted perhaps by his eager face, smiled with a certain facile amiability.

“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.