There was more traffic than of old, and it was swifter. In the country from which he came the ox was still the principal motive-power upon the roads: here clearly horses were becoming out of date.
He asked a policeman when the bus for Old Town ran.
"There she is," said the man, pointing. "On the bounce!"
Just across the street, under the particular plane-tree the starlings haunted of evenings, where in the past old Huggett in his bottle-green coat would wait indefinitely with his mouldy pair of browns, there stood a gaudy motor-bus, decked on top. A spruce conductor was pulling the bell sharply; and a board on which were printed the starting-times hung from a neighbouring lamp. It was all very precise, powerful, and efficient. Ernie was not sure whether he liked it or not.
But he had little time to think. This mechanical monster was not the old gentlemanly horse-bus with its easy tolerance. It gave no law and knew no mercy. It was swift and terrible; and its heart was of the same stuff as its engines.
He crossed the road and leapt on to the great lurching thing.
Carelessly it bore him along the Old Road to Lewes and then swung away under the Chestnuts into Water Lane.
Here at least nothing had changed but the vehicle that carried him. On his left was Saffrons Croft, just as of old, with its group of splendid elms and the Downs seen through the screen of them; in front on the hill, above the roofs of Old Town, the church-tower with its squat spire, bluff against a background of green.
Two ladies were walking down the hill, a middle-aged and gracious mother, escorted by a tall daughter.
Ernie's neighbour nudged him confidentially.