But the corner was full of possibilities. As likely as not the faithless Punch would be replaced in almost no time by the hardly less fascinating Fantoccini—of which Mother Goose with her milk-pails from which jumped little children, the skeleton that came to bits and joined itself together again, and the four little figures dancing a quadrille dwelt longest in the memory. Indeed, rarely was this wonderful corner unoccupied, for, lacking the more regular entertainers, there was always the chance of tumblers, or tight-rope dancers, or a Happy Family. The last-named, by the way, not infrequently belied its description, and had to be hastily curtained for the saving of its impresario’s reputation. Such _contretemps_, it need hardly be said, met with hearty appreciation from the audience, for children, like their elders, bear with more than equanimity the misfortunes of others. Again, there were dancing dolls which knocked each other about in very lively fashion, a variety of peep-shows, and a delightful organ with a scene of great ingenuity on the top, in which an executioner cut off the head of a queen about once every minute, to the tune of the ‘Marseillaise.’
There was one dreadful day when there came something more than little Kate had bargained for. In place of the looked-for entertainment, there marched along a man dressed in skins, a modern edition of Solomon Eagle, who blew blasts out of a great brass trumpet and announced in a loud voice that the End of the World was at hand. The shock was a terrible one. For months Kate went about haunted by the gloomiest forebodings. Those gruesome pictures of Martin’s in the print-seller’s window assumed a new significance. She began to guess at what we call inexorable fate, to catch a glimpse of destiny. Nor was this all. From pondering, fearsomely, the world’s imminent destruction so convincingly announced, she came to trying, in a hopeless, childish fashion to hark back to the beginning of things. Driving herself almost frantic with terror at the thought of burning worlds afloat in space as dark as night, she would rack her brains as to what was behind it all, until she faced the blank black wall of nothingness, against which she was not the first to knock her poor little head. Then baffled and despairing she would run away, she says, seeking relief and forgetfulness wherever it might be found.