But the bigger shows--the menagerie, the marionettes, and the travelling Theatre Royal--were pitched on Mount Folly, just under his window.

Sometimes the theatre would stay a week or two after the fair was over, until even the boy grew tired of the naphtha-lamps and the voices of the tragedians, and the cornet wheezing under canvas, and began to long for the time when they would leave the square open for the boys to come and play at prisoners' bars in the dusk.
One evening, a fortnight before Whitsun Fair, he had taken his book to the open window, and sat there with it.

Every night he had to learn a text which he repeated next morning to his mother.

Already, across the square, the Mayoralty house was brightly lit, and the bandsmen had begun to arrange their stands and music before it; for the Colonel was receiving company.

Every now and then a carriage arrived, and set down its guests.
After a while Taffy looked up and saw two persons crossing the square--an old man and a little girl.