Oswald wanted to see the walls, because he likes the Story of St Alphege and the Danes.
‘Well, well,’ said the lady, and she put on her hat; it was a really sensible one—not a blob of fluffy stuff and feathers put on sideways and stuck on with long pins, and no shade to your face, but almost as big as ours, with a big brim and red flowers, and black strings to tie under your chin to keep it from blowing off.
Then we went out all together to see Canterbury. Dicky and Oswald took it in turns to carry Denny on their backs. The lady called him ‘The Wounded Comrade’.
We went first to the church. Oswald, whose quick brain was easily aroused to suspicions, was afraid the lady might begin talking in the church, but she did not. The church door was open. I remember mother telling us once it was right and good for churches to be left open all day, so that tired people could go in and be quiet, and say their prayers, if they wanted to. But it does not seem respectful to talk out loud in church. (See Note A.)
When we got outside the lady said, ‘You can imagine how on the chancel steps began the mad struggle in which Becket, after hurling one of his assailants, armour and all, to the ground—’
‘It would have been much cleverer,’ H. O. interrupted, ‘to hurl him without his armour, and leave that standing up.’
‘Go on,’ said Alice and Oswald, when they had given H. O. a withering glance. And the lady did go on. She told us all about Becket, and then about St Alphege, who had bones thrown at him till he died, because he wouldn’t tax his poor people to please the beastly rotten Danes.
And Denny recited a piece of poetry he knows called ‘The Ballad of Canterbury’.
It begins about Danish warships snake-shaped, and ends about doing as you’d be done by. It is long, but it has all the beef-bones in it, and all about St Alphege.
Then the lady showed us the Danejohn, and it was like an oast-house. And Canterbury walls that Alphege defied the Danes from looked down on a quite common farmyard. The hospital was like a barn, and other things were like other things, but we went all about and enjoyed it very much. The lady was quite amusing, besides sometimes talking like a real cathedral guide I met afterwards. (See Note B.) When at last we said we thought Canterbury was very small considering, the lady said—