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Stammers, poker-faced, “I will descend to the servants’ hall and ascertain the whereabouts of a suitably low festivity.”
    Stammers bowed himself out and made his stately way down to the lower regions of His Grace’s town house. “Rally round, boys, and give us a bit o’ help,” he called to his minions. “’Is nibs wants to go slumming.”
    After racking of brains and much consultation Stammers made his way back to His Grace’s bedroom.
    “May I suggest,” he ventured, “the Feast of Saint Twudey.”
    “The what? My dear man,” drawled the duke, “there’s no such fellow in the whole calendar.”
    “He’s a Saxon saint,” said Stammers, who had returned via the library. “The folks down in Bermondsey have held a festival in this saint’s name every year, but it’s more like a fair, Your Grace, with sideshows and carnivals and the like.”
    “And where in Bermondsey does this event take place?”
    “A street called Cutler’s Fields, Your Grace, is the center of the activities.”
    “Very good, Stammers.”
    The Duke poked Freda—who had fallen asleep—awake with one long finger. “We are going to a festival in Cutler’s Fields, in Bermondsey,” he said. “Is that low enough for you?”
    “Couldn’t be lower,” said Freda, yawning. “As low as you can get.”
    Whoever Saint Twudey had been or what he had done to achieve sainthood had long been forgotten by the residents of Cutler’s Fields. All they knew was that on February twenty-eighth of each year, they set up their stalls and invited the gypsies with their sideshows, and forgot about their poverty for one whole day.
    As long as anyone could remember, the weather had always been fine, but this particular year the weather was at its dreariest. Rain thudded down, drumming in the puddles, rattling on the iron roof of the fagot-and-hot-pease-pudding stall, soaking through cracks in worn boots, dripping down necks, rising in steam from the ragged clothes of the habitués of the Pig and Crumpet.
    Bert Smith, released from the guardianship of Ma Barker for one whole day, was making the most of it, alternately abusing and praising his eldest daughter. Mrs. Jenkins, with an ancient feather boa wrapped around her neck, crouched behind a stall of old and cracked china like some molting bird. Mrs. Tyson, who had been crocheting doillies for a year for just this occasion, had the eldest of her brood lined up hopefully behind a makeshift stall. Ma Barker was selling jam tarts, Mr. Barker was selling homemade cider, and old Solly the pawnbroker was selling all the items that no one in Cutler’s Fields could afford to reclaim, and so it was doubtful whether he would make even one sale.
    Up and down the dark street the gypsies flogged their amusements: rifle ranges, each rifle with the sight carefully bent; coconut shies, each coconut but one, carefully glued down; hoopla, where a small ring had to be thrown around a large square peg; fortune-telling by a gypsy who told depressed, downtrodden housewives of the tall, dark stranger who was coming into their lives They all believed every word, for hadn’t Gussie Morris been told just that five years ago, and hadn’t she run off with the sweep?; swings shaped like gondolas that threw you up to the dark, rainy sky; carousels with their jaunty music; and a barrel organ at the corner, competing as best it could.
    And in the very middle of Cutler’s Fields was a small stage with a piece of tattered canvas serving as a canopy, and a legend in curly type telling all and sundry that the “Nightingale of Cutler’s fields, Miss Poppy Duveen, darling of the West End audiences and the crowned heads of Europe,” would sing at precisely five P.M . Poppy had agreed to sing for everyone before she journeyed up to town for her evening’s performance.
    The day had had a dismal start, but as five o’clock drew closer the terrible, drumming, insistent rain had almost been forgotten. Warmed by Mr. Barker’s potent