"You have, of course, often walked from your uncle's to Gran'fer's Wantways," Tietjens said, "with your cousins, taking brandy to the invalid in the old toll-gate house. That's how you know the story of Grand'fer. You said you had never driven it; but you have walked it. That's the way your mind works, isn't it?"
She said: "Oh!"
"Then," Tietjens went on, "would you mind telling me—for the sake of the poor horse—whether Uddlemere is or isn't on our road home. I take it you don't know just this stretch of road, but you know whether it is the right road."
"The touch of pathos," the girl said, "is a wrong note. It's you who're in mental trouble about the road. The horse isn't. . . ."
Tietjens let the cart go on another fifty yards; then he said:
"It is the right road. The Uddlemere turning was the right one. You wouldn't let the horse go another five steps if it wasn't. You're as soppy about horses as . . . as I am."
"There's at least that bond of sympathy between us," she said drily. "Gran'fer's Wantways is six and three-quarters miles from Udimore; Udimore is exactly five from us; total, eleven and three-quarters; twelve and a quarter if you add half a mile for Udimore itself. The name is Udimore, not Uddlemere. Local place-name enthusiasts derive this from 'O'er the mere.' Absurd! Legend as follows: Church builders desiring to put church with relic of St. Rumwold in wrong place, voice wailed: 'O'er the mere.' Obviously absurd! . . . Putrid! 'O'er the' by Grimm's law impossible as 'Udi'; 'mere' not a middle Low German word at all. . . ."
"Why," Tietjens said, "are you giving me all this information?"
"Because," the girl said, "it's the way your mind works. . . . It picks up useless facts as silver after you've polished it picks up sulphur vapour; and tarnishes! It arranges the useless facts in obsolescent patterns and makes Toryism out of them. . . . I've never met a Cambridge Tory man before. I thought they were all in museums and you work them up again out of bones. That's what father used to say; he was an Oxford Disraelian Conservative Imperialist. . . ."
"I know of course," Tietjens said.