its high estate--a huge welter and jumble of things arrested in their
ignoble descent from the shops to the gutter.

At times a stall was loaded with the spoils of a sunken ship or the loot
from a city fire, and you could buy for a song the rare fabrics and costly
dainties of the rich, a stain on the cloth, a discoloured label on the
tin, alone giving a hint of their adventures. Then the people hovered
round like wreckers on a hostile shore, carrying off spoil and treasure at
a fraction of its value, exulting over their booty like soldiers after
pillage.

There was no caprice of the belly that could not be gratified, no want of
the naked body that could not be supplied in this huge bazaar of the poor,
but its cost had to be counted in pence, for those who bought in the
cheapest market came here.

A crowd of women and children clustered like flies round the lolly stall
brought Chook to a standstill; the trays heaped with sweets coloured like
the rainbow, pleased his eye, and, remembering Ada's childish taste for
lollies, he thought suddenly of her friend, Pinkey the red-haired,
and smiled.

Near at hand stood a collection of ferns and pot-plants, fresh and cool,
smelling of green gardens and moist earth. Over the way, men lingered
with serious faces, trying the edge of a chisel with their thumb,
examining saws, planes, knives, and shears with a workman's interest in
the tools that earn his bread.

Chook stopped to admire the art gallery, gay with coloured pictures from
the Christmas numbers of English magazines. On the walls were framed