“Can we have a horse and trap to take us to Coventry to-night? No? That’s bad. Nor a bed? Dear me! Then please draw us half a pint of beer.”
The beer is brought. P. tastes it, looks up with a happy smile, and begins again:
“Can we have a horse and trap?” etc., etc.
It is astounding, but at the tenth repetition of this formula the landlady becomes as water, and henceforth we have our way with that inn.
Moreover, we have the landlord’s company at supper—a deliberate, heavy man, who tells us that he brews his own beer, and has twenty-three children. He adds that the former distinction has given him many friends, the latter many relatives. A niece of his is to be married at Coventry to-morrow.
Q., who ran into Coventry by an early train next morning to fetch some letters that awaited us, was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the bride as she stepped into her carriage. He reported her to be pretty, and we wished her all happiness. P. meanwhile had strolled up the river to Wolston Mill, which we had passed in the darkness, and he too had praises to chant of that, and of a grand old Elizabethan farm-house that he had found outside the village.
We embarked again by Brandon Castle, the abode once of a Roman garrison, and later of an exclusive Norman
SITE OF BRANDON CASTLE
family that kept its own private gallows at Bretford, just above. Where the castle stood now thrive the brier, the elder, the dogrose, the blackthorn twined with clematis; the outer moat is become a morass, choked with ragwort and the flowering rush; the inner moat is dry, and a secular ash sprawls down its side. We left it to glide beneath a graceful Georgian bridge; past a lawn dotted with sleek cattle, a small red mill, a row of melancholy anglers, a mile of giant alders, and so down to Ryton-on-Dunsmore, the western outpost of the great heath. As the heath ended, the country’s character began to change, and all grew open. On either hand broad pastures divided us from the arable slopes where a month ago the gleaners were moving amid