The Slowcoach

by E. V. Lucas

It looked as though they might stay there for ever, but suddenly the farmer began to laugh. "Why, you're not gipsies," he said. "I believe you're Avories."

"That's so," said Kink.

"Well, I'm blessed!" the farmer cried. "And to think we should be falling out when I've been waiting to see you these many days! My name's Pescod. My halfsister's your cook."

Mr. Pescod climbed out of his cart and shook hands with all the children. "Now I'll turn," he said, with a smile to Kink, and he led his horse up the lane, talking all the while, while the Slowcoach followed. They told him about their difficulty in finding any trace of him, and he called Collins a donkey for not directing them better, and forgetting to say that her name and his were different.

"Never mind," he said; "here you are at last. We've been looking out for you for a long time. My missis never hears wheels nowadays but what she runs to the door to see if it's you."

Lycett's farm was a long, low, white house with a yew hedge leading from the garden gate to the front door. This hedge, of which Collins had told them, was famous in the neighbourhood; for it was enormously old, and as thick almost as masonry, and it was kept so carefully clipped that it was as smooth also as a wall. At the gate itself the yews were cut into tall pillars with a pheasant at the top of each, and then there were smaller pillars at intervals all the way up the path, about twenty yards, with a thick joining band of yew between them. They were so massive that very little light could get into the front windows or the doorway; but, as Mr. Pescod said, "anyone can have light, few yew hedges like that in the world."

Mrs. Pescod was a comfortable, smiling woman whose one idea was that everyone must either be hungry or in need of feeding up. All of the children in turn she looked at anxiously, saying that she was sure that they had not had enough to eat. As a matter of fact, they had not perhaps eaten as much as they would have done at Chiswick, and they had, of course, worked harder; but they were all very well, and said so. But it made no difference to Mrs. Pescod.

"Ah, my dear," she said to Janet, "you're pale. I shouldn't like you to go back to your ma looking like that. No, while you're here you must have three good meals. A good tea, and a good supper, and a good breakfast. I wish you'd stay longer, and let me have a real go at you; but if you can't, you can't, and there's an end of it."

Mrs. Pescod's notion of a good tea was terrific. Eggs for everyone to begin with (to Gregory's great pleasure, for an egg with his tea was almost his favourite treat). Freshly baked hot cakes soaking in butter. Hot toast. Three kinds of jam. Bread and butter. Watercress. Mustard and cress. This was at five o'clock, and as supper was at half-past eight, Janet urged the others to explore as much as possible, or they would have no appetite, and then Mrs. Pescod would be miserable.

It was a delightful farm. There was everything that one wants in a farm,—a pond with ducks; a haystack half cut, so that one might jump about on it; straw ricks on stone posts; cowsheds smelling so warm and friendly, with swallows darting in and out of the doorway to their nests in the roof; stables with gentle horses who ate the green stuff you gave them without biting you; guinea-pigs, the property of Master Walter Pescod, who was a weekly boarder at Cirencester; fantail pigeons; bantams; ferrets, very frightening to everyone but Kink, who knew just how to hold them; and a turnip-slicer, which Gregory turned for some time, munching turnip all the while.