lay in disordered heaps--silk blouses covered with tawdry lace, skirts
heavy with gaudy trimming--the draggled plumage of fine birds that had
come to grief. But here buyer and seller met on level terms, for each
knew to a hair the value of the sorry garments; and they chaffered with
crafty eyes, each searching for the silent thought behind the spoken lie.

Chook stared at the bookstall with contempt, wondering how people found
the time and patience to read. One side was packed with the forgotten
lumber of bookshelves--an odd volume of sermons, a collection of
scientific essays, a technical work out of date. And the men, anxious to
improve their minds, stared at the titles with the curious reverence of
the illiterate for a printed book. At their elbows boys gloated over the
pages of a penny dreadful, and the women fingered penny novelettes with
rapid movements, trying to judge the contents from the gaudy cover.

The crowd at the provision stall brought Chook to a standstill again.
Enormous flitches hung from the posts, and the shelves were loaded with
pieces of bacon tempting the eye with a streak of lean in a wilderness of
fat. The buyers watched hungrily as the keen knife slipped into the rich
meat, and the rasher, thin as paper, fell on the board like the shaving
from a carpenter's plane. The dealer, wearing a clean shirt and white
apron, served his customers with smooth, comfortable movements, as if
contact with so much grease had nourished his body and oiled his joints.

When Chook elbowed his way to the corner where Joe Crutch and Waxy Collins
had promised to meet him, there was no sign of them, and he took another
turn up the middle arcade. It was now high tide in the markets, and the
stream of people filled the space between the stalls like a river in flood.
And they moved at a snail's pace, clutching in their arms fowls,
pot-plants, parcels of groceries, toys for the children, and a thousand