A very dirty-nosed boy, overhearing a hurried council, volunteered the information that the circus had not yet opened.
"Never mind," they told each other—and turned to the side-shows. These were all of one character—the arrangement by which you throw something or roll something at something else, and if you hit the something you get a prize—the sort of prize that is sold in Houndsditch at ninepence a gross.
Most of these arrangements are so ordered that to get a prize is impossible. For instance, a peculiarly offensive row of masks with open mouths in which pipes are set up. In the golden days of long ago if you hit a pipe it broke—and you got a "prize" worth—I can't do sums—put it briefly at the hundred and forty-fourth part of ninepence. But the children found that when their wooden ball struck the pipe it didn't break. They wondered why! Then, looking more closely, they saw that the pipes were not of clay, but of painted wood. They could never be broken—and the whole thing was a cruel mockery of hope.
The coconut-shy was not what it used to be either. Once one threw sticks, three shies a penny. Now it is a penny a shy, with light wooden balls. You can win a coconut if you happen to hit one that is not glued onto its support. If you really wish to win one of these unkindly fruits it is well to stand and watch a little and not to aim at those coconuts which, when they are hit, fail to fall off the sticks. Are they glued on? One hopes not. But if they are, who can wonder or reprove? It is hard to get a living, anyhow.
There was one thing, though, that roused the children's resentment—chiefly, I think, because its owners were clean and did not look half-starved, so there was no barrier of pity between them and dislike—a sort of round table sloping up to its center. On this small objects were arranged. For a penny you received two hoops. If you could throw a hoop over an object that object was yours. None of the rustic visitors to the fair could, it seemed, or cared to.
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