“We going to Chastlands?” asked Peter.
“No,” said the young man.
“Then where are we going?” said Peter.
“These here cars’ll do forty—fifty miles an hour,” said the young man, changing the subject.
In a little while they had passed beyond the limits of Peter’s knowledge altogether, and were upon an unknown road. It was astonishing how the car devoured the road. You saw a corner a long way off and then immediately you were turning this corner. The car went as swiftly up the hills as down. It said “honk.” The trees and hedges flew by as if one was in a train, and behind we trailed a marvellous cloud of dust. The driver sat before us with his head sunken between his hunched-up shoulders; he never seemed to move; he was quite different from the swaying, noble coachman with the sun-red face, wearing a top hat with a waist and a broad brim, who sat erect and poised his whip and drove Lady Charlotte’s white horse.
§ 3
For a time the road ran undulating between high hedges and tall trees and through villages, and all along to the right of it were the steep, round-headed Downs. Then came a little town, and the automobile turned off into a valley that cut the Downs across and opened out more and more, and then came heathery common and a town, and then lanes and many villages, flat meadows and flatter, poplars, and then another town with a bridge, and then across long levels of green a glimpse of the big tower of Windsor Castle. “This is Runnymede, where Magna Carta was signed,” said the young man suddenly. “And that’s Windsor, where the King lives—when he isn’t living somewhere else, as he usually does.... He’s a ’ot un is the King.... See the chap there sailing a boat?”
They went right into Windsor and had a glimpse of the great gates of the Castle and the round tower very near to them, and then they turned down a steep, narrow, paved street and so came into a district of little mean villas in rows and rows. And outside one of these the car stopped.
“Here we are,” said the young man.
“Where are we?” asked Peter.