midday
The country , save where there were a few lingering patches of turnips , was all one dingy drab , with abundant scalds on the undrained fallows . The grass was more like hemp than anything else . The very rushes were yellow and sickly . Long before midday the whole country was in commotion . The same sort of people commingled that one would expect to see if there was a balloon to go up , and a man to go down , or be hung at the same place . Fine ladies in all the colours of the rainbow ; and swarthy , beady-eyed dames , with their stalwart , big-calved , basket-carrying comrades ; gentle young people from behind the counter ; Dandy Candy merchants from behind the hedge ; rough-coated dandies with their silver-mounted whips ; and Shaggyford roughs , in their baggy , poacher-like coats , and formidable clubs ; carriages and four , and carriages and pairs ; and gigs and dog-carts , and Whitechapels , and Newport Pagnels , and long carts , and short carts , and donkey carts , converged from all quarters upon the point of attraction at Broom Hill . If Farmer Scourgefield had made a mob , he could not have got one that would be more likely to do damage to his farm than this steeple-chase one .