But There Were Compensations, And One, Perhaps The Best Of
All, Was That This Method Of Seeing The Country Made Us More
Intimate With The People We Met And Stayed With.
They were
mostly poor people, cottagers in small remote villages; and
we, too, were poor, often footsore, in need of their
ministrations, and nearer to them on that account than if we
had travelled in a more comfortable way.
I can recall a
hundred little adventures we met with during those wanderings,
when we walked day after day, without map or guide-book as our
custom was, not knowing where the evening would find us, but
always confident that the people to whom it would fall in the
end to shelter us would prove interesting to know and would
show us a kindness that money could not pay for. Of these
hundred little incidents let me relate one.
It was near the end of a long summer day when we arrived at a
small hamlet of about a dozen cottages on the edge of an
extensive wood - a forest it is called; and, coming to it, we
said that here we must stay, even if we had to spend the night
sitting in a porch. The men and women we talked to all
assured us that they did not know of anyone who could take us
in, but there was Mr. Brownjohn, who kept the shop, and was
the right person to apply to. Accordingly we went to the
little general shop and heard that Mr. Brownjohn was not at
home. His housekeeper, a fat, dark, voluble woman with
prominent black eyes, who minded the shop in the master's
absence, told us that Mr. Brownjohn had gone to a neighbouring
farm-house on important business, but was expected back
shortly. We waited, and by and by he returned, a shabbily
dressed, weak-looking little old man, with pale blue eyes and
thin yellowish white hair. He could not put us up, he said,
he had no room in his cottage; there was nothing for us but to
go on to the next place, a village three miles distant, on the
chance of finding a bed there. We assured him that we could
go no further, and after revolving the matter a while longer
he again said that we could not stay, as there was not a room
to be had in the place since poor Mrs. Flowerdew had her
trouble. She had a spare room and used to take in a lodger
occasionally, and a good handy woman she was too; but now - no,
Mrs. Flowerdew could not take us in. We questioned him, and
he said that no one had died there and there had been no
illness. They were all quite well at Mrs. Flowerdew's; the
trouble was of another kind. There was no more to be said
about it.
As nothing further could be got out of him we went in search
of Mrs. Flowerdew herself, and found her in a pretty
vine-clad cottage.
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