TWO:Thursday broke clear and windy��little curls of cloud flew high against spreads of watery blue, and the wind raced over Boarzell, smelling of wet furrows. As usual[Pg 163] everyone at Odiam was going to the Fair��even Mrs. Backfield, for Reuben said that he would not let the girls go without her. Caro and Tilly were now fifteen and sixteen, and their father began to have fears lest they should marry and leave him. Tilly especially, with her creamy complexion like Naomi's, and her little tip-tilted nose, freckled over the bridge, gave him anxious times. He sternly discouraged any of the neighbouring farmers' sons who seemed inclined to call; he was not going to lose his daughters just when Mrs. Backfield's poor health made them indispensable. It could not be long before his mother died��already her bouts of rheumatism were so severe that she was practically crippled each winter��and when she died Tilly and Caro must take her place.Their next halt was at the beginning of the Strand, opposite the princely mansion of the bishop of Chester. The gates were forced in, and the garden encircling the building filled with the commons, who, hissing and shouting, bade John Fordham come forth. When it was discovered that the bishop was not within its walls, the house was presently glowing in one bright sheet of flame. It was told to Tyler, while this was going on, that a body of the Essex men had marched on from Mile-end, and taking a northerly direction, had pillaged and destroyed many dwellings, and among others, that of the prior of Saint John of Jerusalem, at Highbury; while another division was rapidly advancing by the way of Holborn, to attack the palace of John of Gaunt at the Savoy.

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