Yet a poorer walker it would have been hard to
find, and on even my most prolonged wanderings the end of each
day usually brought extreme fatigue.
This, too, although my
only companion was slow - slower than the poor proverbial snail
or tortoise - and I would leave her half a mile or so behind to
force my way through unkept hedges, climb hills, and explore
woods and thickets to converse with every bird and shy little
beast and scaly creature I could discover. But mark what
follows. In the late afternoon I would be back in the road or
footpath, satisfied to go slow, then slower still, until - the
snail in woman shape would be obliged to slacken her pace to
keep me company, and even to stand still at intervals to give
me needful rest.
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.
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