XII
WHY MIGNON WENT TO MARKET
iT is market day at Dives. This means that it is Saturday. On Friday the market is at Cabourg, on Wednesday at Buezval, and on the other days at the several small towns within a radius of twenty miles.
It means, too, that the street fronting the Inn is blocked up with a line of carts, little and big, their shafts in the gutter, the horses eating from troughs tied to the hind axle; that another line stretches its length along the narrow street on the kitchen side of the Inn which leads to the quaint Norman church, squeezing itself through a yet narrower street into a small open square, where it comes bump up against a huge hulk of a building, choked up on these market days with piles of vegetables, crates of chickens, boxes of apples, unruly pigs alive and squealing; patient, tired, little calves; geese, ducks—all squawking; chrysanthemums in pots spread out on the sidewalk; old brass, old iron; everything that
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