about noon
Messengers were coming and going . Samples were brought in . Draymen came for orders . Apple-women and pie-men dropped in about noon , and there were plenty of cheap apples and cheap jokes when the peddlers were young and pretty . Customers came and brother merchants , who went into Mr. Lawrence Newt 's room . They talked China news , and South American news , and Mediterranean news . Their conversation was full of the names of places of which poems and histories have been written .