CHAPTER XVII
THE FUN OF THE FAIR
There were three days in the year when the venerable market-place was out of bounds, all but the draggled ribbon of pavement running round it and the few shops opening thereon. The rest was monopolised and profaned by the vans and booths of a travelling fair, which reached the town usually about the second week in March. The school took little notice of the tawdry encampment and its boorish revels; but the incessant strains of a steam merry-go-round became part of the place for the time being, and made night especially hideous in the town houses nearest the scene.
Nearest of all was Heriot's house, and greatest of all sufferers the four boys in the little top room with the dormer window over the street. Jan was still one of them, and Bingley another. But Joyce had left, and Crabtree had taken charge of one of the long dormitories overlooking the quad. Chips Carpenter and a new boy had succeeded to their partitions; and if in one case the intellectual loss was irreparable, in the other that of an incorrigible vocabulary was perhaps less to be deplored.
But Jan's was still the silent corner; even to Chips he would have little to say before the other two; for in this his fifth term he had fallen on another evil time. It had nothing to do with his work, however, and neither
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