XII.
The canoeists left Landrecies on a rainy morning, the judge under an umbrella seeing them off. My lot was pleasanter, for the morning was fine and the landlord's son, a bright lad, with those babyish socks which French boys wear, escorted me some way out of the town on his bicycle, chatting merrily about the state of the roads, and evincing great surprise when he heard that we would be fined for cycling on the footpath in England.
My route lay along the highway to Guise for a time and close to the canal, passing through a gentle undulating country with far views of thickly-wooded fields and little hills. The hamlets by the way were surrounded by hop fields, the great poles with their fantastic coverings of the vine being the most noticeable feature of the wayside, just as R. L. S. had observed them when the hop-growers of to-day were bien jeune, as the old gentleman at the play in Paris described Stevenson himself. Etreux, where the canal journey ended, I found a thriving and agreeable little town, the rattle of the loom being heard from many an open door, and the thud, thud of flails in the farm-steadings on the outskirts. At Etreux the canoes were placed on a light country cart one morning, and the travellers walked to Vadencourt by way of Tupigny, a village where I was served with a make-shift lunch at a little inn, the landlady doing the cooking and laying the table with a baby held in her left arm! Vadencourt is full of weavers, and here close by the old bridge over the river the Arethusa and Cigarette were launched in the fast-flowing water of the River Oise.