The Chequers Inn is very old-fashioned indeed, and seems to have been built and added to through many generations, the ancient parts never being taken down.
Sunday was a delightful day, so still, so quiet, so beautiful. To live, to exist on such a day as this amid such scenery is to be happy.
September 7th.—We are on the road by nine. It is but five-and-twenty miles to Brighton. If we can do seven-and-twenty among Highland hills, we can surely do the same in tame domestic England.
But the roads are soft and sorely trying, and at Hand Cross we are completely storm-stayed by the terrible downpours of rain. I do not think the oldest inhabitant could have been far wrong when he averred it was the heaviest he ever could remember.
During a kind of break in the deluge we started, and in the evening reached the cross roads at Aldbourne, and here we got snugly at anchor after an eighteen-mile journey.
My little maiden went to sleep on the sofa hours before we got in, and there she was sound and fast. I could not even wake her for supper, though on my little table were viands that might make the teeth of a monk of the olden times water with joyful anticipation.
So I supped alone with Bob.
I spent a gloomy eerisome evening. It was so gloomy! And out of doors when I dared to look the darkness was profound. The incessant rattling of the raindrops on the roof was a sound not calculated to raise one’s spirits. I began to take a dreary view of life in general, indeed I began to feel superstitions. I—
“Papa, dear.”
Ha! Inez was awake, and smiling all over. Well, we would have a little pleasant prattle together, and then to bed. The rattling of the raindrops would help to woo us to sleep, and if the wind blew the Wanderer would rock. We would dream we were at sea, and sleep all the sounder for it.