Some small boys with a fishmonger's truck were collecting firewood in the meadow by the beck, and thought everybody's quest must be the same. "How many sticks have you got, missus?" they cried as I passed.
The wall was easily traceable across the fields, and led me out on to the Scaleby road, across the road into more fields, and so to Tarraby.
Here I turned off to the left, to find the Near Boot Inn, and get some tea. I had met with a small adventure near Tarraby, on my way out in the morning. I had my lunch of sandwiches and biscuits in my pockets, and I was standing by a field-gate, studying my Ordnance-map, when suddenly there sprang upon me, out of the air apparently, five greyhound pups. Pups though they were, their forepaws reached to my shoulders. They were all over me in a moment; and, my hands being encumbered with the map, in saving that I never gave a thought to my pockets. Their noses led them straight there, and before I realized what they were about they had divided my lunch between them, and were coming back for more! They loved me so dearly after that that I could not get rid of them for the distance of several fields.
In consequence of this I had had nothing since breakfast but the "pot o' milk" at Bleatarn, so I sought the Inn at Tarraby very hopefully.
But the landlady was not nearly so sure that she wanted to give me some tea as I was that I wanted to have it. She did not actually refuse, but she did all she could to discourage me. She seemed to think that if she was the Near Boot, then I was certainly the "off leg"! She had a bad headache, and she hadn't any cake, nor any cream, nor much of anything apparently.
However, I took "a deal o' discouraging," and I sat on in the parlour and waited, for she had said: "Well, anyhow, I must attend to these men first."
As I looked at the pictures on the parlour walls, an idea suddenly dawned on me.
Every picture represented a prize greyhound!
When the landlady returned, I remarked casually that I was very hungry because my lunch had been stolen by five greyhound pups, and of course I avoided showing the least tinge of resentment or annoyance (having felt none!) She did not say much, but I noticed a change in her manner, and when the tea did appear there were eggs and cake and pastry, to say nothing of cream, and home-made bread and butter and jam. And, to crown all, when I inquired for the headache, she said, "Do you know, it has gone!"
So I did full justice to her tea, while the men in the next room were telling each other what horses they had backed for the Derby, and how much they had lost.