Kitabı oku: «The Cruise of the Land-Yacht «Wanderer»: or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan», sayfa 14
But I fear that I have already wearied the reader, and so must refrain.
Stay though, one word about our Highland heather – one word and I have done. I have found both this and heath growing in England, but never in the same savage luxuriance as on the wilds of the Grampian range. Here you can wander in it waist-deep, if you are not afraid of snakes, and this Erica cineria you will find of every shade, from white – rare – to pink and darkest crimson: —
“Those wastes of heath
That stretch for leagues to lure the bee,
Where the wild bird, on pinions strong,
Wheels round, and pours his piping song,
And timid creatures wander free.”
I trust I may be forgiven for making all these poetical quotations, but as I commenced with one from the poet Campbell, so must I end with one from the selfsame bard. It is of the purple heath and heather he is thinking when he writes: —
“I love you for lulling me back into dreams
Of the blue Highland mountains, and echoing streams,
And of birchen glades breathing their balm.
While the deer is seen glancing in sunshine remote,
And the deep-mellow gush of the wood-pigeon’s note,
Makes music that sweetens the calm.”
Chapter Twenty Five.
A Chapter about Children – Children in Bouquets – Children by the “sad sea-wave” – sweet maudie brewer – wee dickie ellis – the miner’s sprite
“On these laughing rosy faces
There are no deep lines of sin;
None of passion’s dreary traces,
That betray the wounds within.”
Tupper.
As much even as the wild flowers themselves were the children a feature in the seemingly interminable panorama, that flitted past me in my long tour in the Wanderer. The wild flowers were everywhere; by wayside, on hillside, by streamlet, in copse, hiding in fairy nooks among the brackens in the woodlands, carpeting mossy banks in the pine forests, floating on the lakes, nodding to the running brooklets, creeping over ruined walls and fences, and starring the hedgerows, – wild flowers, wild flowers everywhere.
Wild flowers everywhere, and children everywhere.
Country children: minding cows or sheep or pigs; trotting Blondin-like along the parapets of high bridges; riding or swinging on gateways; stringing daisies on flowery meads; paddling in stream or in burn; fishing by lonely tarns; swinging in the tree-tops; or boring head first through hedges of blackthorn and furze.
Village children: sitting in dozens on door-steps; a-squat on the footpath, nursing babies as big as themselves; at play on the walks or in the street midst; toddling solemnly off to school, with well-washed faces, and book-laden; or rushing merrily home again, with faces all begrimed with mud and tears.
Seaside children: out in boats, rocked in the cradle of the deep; bathing in dozens, swimming, sprawling, splashing, whooping; squatting among the seaweed; dabbling in pools, or clinging to the cliffs with all the tenacity of crabs.
Children everywhere, all along. Curly-pated children, bare-legged children, well-dressed children, and children in rags, but all shouting, screaming, laughing, smiling, or singing, and all as happy, seemingly, as the summer’s day was long.
“Harmless, happy little treasures,
Full of truth, and trust, and mirth;
Richest wealth and purest pleasures
In this mean and guilty earth.
“But yours is the sunny dimple,
Radiant with untutored smiles;
Yours the heart, sincere and simple,
Innocent of selfish wiles.
“Yours the natural curling tresses,
Prattling tongues and shyness coy;
Tottering steps and kind caresses,
Pure with health, and warm with joy.”
Look at that little innocent yonder in that cottage doorway. There is a well-kept garden in front of the house, but not a flower in it more sweet than she. Round-faced, curly-tressed, dimpled chin and cheeks and knee. It is early morning, she has rushed to the door in her little night-dress; one stocking is on, the other she waves wildly aloft as she cheers the Wanderer.
Here at a village door is a group – a bouquet you may say – worth looking it. Three such pretty children, seated in a doorway, on the steps. They are dressed in blue, with white socks and fairy-like caps, and the oldest is holding a bald-headed crowing baby in her lap.
Here is another tableau: three pretty little well-dressed maidens, hand-in-hand, dancing and whirling in Indian circle round a hole which has been dug in the green sward; a fourth seated close by the hole, flicking the dust up in clouds with a green bough, and giving each a full share of it. Never mind the lace-edged dresses, heed not the snow-white pinafores, round and round and round they go, and how they laugh and shout, and enjoy it!
And here is a bouquet from Musselburgh, though perhaps it has a somewhat fishy flavour. A group of chubby children on the beach, among the somewhat black sand; one has a large crab-shell with a string to it – this is his cart, and it is laden with cockle-shells and star-fish; another boy has a dead eel on a string; a baby is lying on its face digging holes in the sand with a razor shell, and a little girl is nursing a cod’s head for a doll, and has dressed it up with seaweed. They have bare heads and feet, and smudgy faces, but dear me! they do look happy!
Five little kilted boys, squatting on the grass; between them is a round kettle pot half-filled with porridge, and each holds in his hand a “cogie” of milk. But they start to their feet as the Wanderer rolls past, wave aloft their horn spoons, and shout till we are out of sight.
Here is a little cherub of some seven summers old. He very likely belongs to that pretty cottage whose redbrick gable peeps out through a cloudland of trees yonder. He has a barrow, and it is nearly full, for the boy has been scavenging on the road, gathering material to make the mushrooms grow in his father’s garden. Right in the centre of this he has dug a nest, and in this nest is seated his baby brother. He is telling him a story, and the baby brother is crowing and kicking, and looking all over so delighted and joyful in his questionable nest, that one almost envies him. That youngster may emigrate some day, and he may become President of America yet. When I think of that I cannot help feeling a kind of respect for him.
The most smudgy-faced children I noticed on my tour were, I think, some of those in the outlying villages of the North Riding of Yorks. Of course, they always came trooping out to view the caravan, from cottage doors, from garden gates, from schools, and from playgrounds, the foremost calling aloud to those behind to come quick, to run, for a show was coming.
If we happened to stop, they would gather around us and stare with saucer eyes and open mouths astonished, expectant. If we drove on quickly, they speedily set up an impromptu “Hip, hip, hoor – ay – ay!” and waved their arms or ragged caps in the air.
Talk about the great unwashed! These were the little unwashed, and a far larger section of the public than their bigger brethren.
Do not blame the poor things because their faces are not over cleanly. It may not even be the fault of their parents. Early of a morning we often met children going toddling off to school, with books and slates, and, mind you, with faces that positively glistened and reflected the sunbeams, the result of recent ablutions, and a plentiful use of soap. We met school children again coming from school of an evening, but sadly different in facial aspect, for lo! and alas! grief soon begins of a morning with a child, and tears begin to flow, so cheeks get wet, and are wiped, and dust begrimes them, and long ere evening the average boy’s face is woefully be-smudged.
I found a little Scotch boy once standing with his face against a hayrick weeping bitterly. I daresay he had been chastised for some fault and had come here to indulge in the luxury of a good cry. But would he own it? No, he was too Scotch for that.
“What are ye greetin’ (weeping) about, my wee laddie?” I said, pulling him round.
“I’m no greetin’,” he replied through his tears.
“It looks unco’ like it,” I ventured to remark.
“I tell you, si-si-sir,” he sobbed, “I’m no gaga – greetin’. I’m only just letting —
“‘The tears doon fa’,
For Jock o’ Hadedean.’”
I gave him a penny on the spot, and that changed his tune.
Children by the “Sad Sea-Wave.”
There is nothing sad about the sea from a child’s point of view. On many a long voyage I have known children be the light and the life of a ship fore and aft.
Coming from the Cape once I remember we had just one child passenger, a fair-haired, blue-eyed, curly-polled little rascal whom the sailors had baptised Tommy Tadpole. He was a saloon passenger, but was quite as often forward among the men on deck or down below. Not more than seven years of age, I often wondered he did not have his neck broken, for even in half a gale of wind he would be rushing about like a mad thing, or up and down the steep iron ladder that led to the engine room. He had a mother on board, and a nurse as well, but he was too slippery for either, and for the matter of that everyone on board was Tommy’s nurse or playmate.
Catch-me-who-catch-can was the boy’s favourite game, and at this he would keep three sailors busy for half-an-hour, and still manage to elude their grasp. How he doubled and bolted and dived, to be sure, round the binnacle, round the capstan, over the winch, under the spare anchor, down one ladder and up another – it was marvellous! One day I remember he was fairly caught; he got up into the main-rigging, and actually through the lubber hole into the main-top. Ah! but Tommy couldn’t get back, and there he sat for some time, for all the world like that sweet little cherub who sits up aloft to look after the life of poor Jack, till a sturdy seaman ran up, and Tommy rode down on his shoulder.
And the waves were never high enough, nor the wind stormy enough, to frighten Tommy Tadpole.
But country children on a visit to the seashore find fun and joy and something to laugh at in every breaker or tumbling wave.
A storm was raging at Brighton the day after my arrival there in the Wanderer. Great seas were thundering in upon the shingly beach and leaping madly over pier and wall.
“Look, look!” cried my little daughter Inez delightedly, “how the waves are smoking!”
“Surely,” she added, “great whales must be in the water to make it wobble so.”
But it was great fun to her to watch them “wobbling,” all the same.
She crowed with joy at the scene.
“Oh! they do make me laugh so,” she cried, clapping her tiny hands, “they are such fun!” Yes, and for weeks afterwards, whenever she thought of that storm-tossed ocean she would laugh.
But really you can find everlasting amusement at the seaside in summer or in autumn – supposing you are a child, I mean. Shingle is not very nice to dig among, perhaps, with a wooden spade, but then you find such quantities of pretty stones and shells among it, and morsels of coloured glass worn round by the action of the waves. You cannot build a very satisfactory house or fortification with the smaller kinds of shingle, but you can throw spadefuls of it in all directions – over your companions or over your nurse, and if a shower of it does fall on that old gentleman’s long hat, what matters it whether he be angry or not? it was fun to hear it rattle, and you would do it again and again if you only dared.
If you are permitted to take off shoes and stockings and tuck up your dress, what a glorious treat to wade on the soft sand, and feel the merry wee waves playing soft and warm about your legs! If you cannot have shoes and stockings off, then you can chase each receding wave, and let the advancing ones chase you. This will make you laugh, and if one should overtake you and go swilling round your ankles, why, what matters it? to listen to the water jerking in your boots at every step is in itself good fun.
There is endless amusement to be got out of seaweed, too, and if you have a big dog the fun will be fast and furious.
Perhaps he is a large Newfoundland, like our Hurricane Bob. By the seaside Bob is always on the best of terms with himself and every other living creature. You can bury him in the sand all but the nose; you can clothe him from head to tail with broad bands of wet seaweed, he enjoys it all, takes everything in good part. He will go splashing and dashing into the sea after a stick or a stone, and if you were to fall plump into the sea yourself he would jump after you, carry you out, and lay you on the beach in the most businesslike fashion imaginable; then shake himself, the water that flies from his great jacket of jet making rainbows all round him in the sunshine.
No; there is no sadness about the sea-wave in the happy, merry days of childhood.
Littlehampton is altogether a children’s watering-place. There they were by the dozen and score, sailing yachts in little pools, flying kites and building castles, playing at horses, riding on donkeys, gathering shells and seaweed, dancing, singing, laughing, screaming, racing, chasing, paddling and puddling, and all as happy as happy could be.
I was always pleased enough to have interesting children come and see me; whether they brought little bouquets of flowers with them – which they often did – or not, they always brought sunshine.
Let me give just one or two specimens of my juvenile visitors. I could, give a hundred.
Sweet Maudie Brewer.
I could not help qualifying her name with a pretty adjective from the first moment I saw her. Not that Maudie is a very beautiful child, but so winning and engaging, and exceedingly old-fashioned. I made her acquaintance at the inn where my horses were stabled. She is an orphan – virtually, at all events – but the landlord of the hotel is exceedingly good to her, and very proud also of his wee six-year-old Maudie.
It is as a conversationalist that Maudie shines. She has no shyness, but talks like an old, old world-wise mite of a woman.
“Now,” she said, after we had talked on a variety of topics, “come into the parlour and I shall play and sing to you?”
As she took me by the hand I had to go, but had I known the little treat I was to have I should have gone more willingly. For not only can Maudie sing well, but she plays airs and waltzes in a way that quite surprised me; and I found myself standing by the piano turning over the leaves for this child of six summers as seriously as if she had been seventeen. That was Maudie Brewer.
Wee Dickie Ellis.
Dickie is another old-fashioned child, a handsome, healthful country boy, who lives in Yorkshire. Very chatty and very free was Dickie, but by no means impertinent. Age about seven. But his age does not cost Dickie a thought, for when I asked him how old he was, he said it was either six or sixteen, but he wasn’t sure which. He admired the caravan, and admired Hurricane Bob, but it was my talking cockatoo that specially took his fancy.
He had not been gone half-an-hour till I found him on the steps again.
“I’ve just coome,” he said, “to have another look at t’ould Poll parrot.”
Polly took to him, danced to him and sang to him, and finally make a great grab at his nose.
Dickie was back in an hour.
“Coome again,” he explained, “to have a look at t’ould Poll parrot.”
I thought I was rid of him now for the day; but after sunset, lo! Dickie appeared once more.
“I’m gangin’ to bed noo,” he said, “and I want to say ‘good-night’ to t’ould Poll parrot.”
And next morning, before I started, up came Dickie sure enough.
“Just coome,” he sadly remarked, “to have t’last look at t’ould Poll parrot.”
The Miner’s Sprite.
The Wanderer was lying in a quiet meadow in a mining district. It was a lovely summer’s evening; tall trees and a church tower not far off stood out dark against a crimson sky, for the sun had but just gone down. I was seated reading on the back steps, and all alone.
“Peas, sir,” said a voice close to me; “peas, sir.”
“I don’t buy peas,” I replied, looking up in some surprise, for I’d heard no footstep.
“Peas, sir,” persisted the child – “I mean, if oo peas, sir, I’ve come to see your talavan.”
What a sprite she looked! What a gnome! Her little face and hands and bare legs and feet were black with coal dust, only her lips were pink. When she smiled she showed two rows of little pearly teeth, and her eyes were very large and lustrous. I took all this in at a glance, and could not help noticing the smallness of her feet and hands and ears.
“Take my hand and help me up the stails. Be twick.” I did as I was told, and everything inside was duly criticised and admired. She sat on a footstool, and told me a deal about herself. She spent all the day in the mine, she said, playing and singing, and everybody loved her, and was so “dood” to her.
She lived with her pa and ma in a cottage she pointed to.
“But,” she added, “my pa isn’t my real faddel (father), and ma isn’t my real muddel (mother).” Here was a mystery.
“And where is your real father and mother?”
“Oh!” she replied, “I never had a real faddel and muddel.”
As she was going away she said, —
“You may tiss me, and tome and see me.”
I could not see my way to kiss so black a face, but I promised to go and see her at her “faddel’s” cottage. I did so in an hour, but only to find the mystery that hung around my little gnome deepened.
My little gnome was a gnome no more, but a fairy, washed and clean and neatly dressed, and with a wealth of sunny hair floating over her shoulders. The miner himself was clean, too, and the cottage was the pink of tidiness and order. There were even flowers in vases, and a canary in a gilded cage hanging in the window.
Though I stayed and talked for quite a long time, I did not succeed in solving the mystery.
“She ain’t ours, sir, little Looie ain’t,” said the sturdy miner. “Come to us in a queer way, but lo! sir, how we does love her, to be sure!”
Chapter Twenty Six.
From Inverness to London – Southward Away – The “Wanderer’s” Little Mistress – A Quiet Sabbath – A Dreary Evening at Aldbourne
“While he hath a child to love him
No man can be poor indeed;
While he trusts a Friend above him
None can sorrow, fear, or need.”
Tupper.
I would willingly draw a veil over the incidents that occurred, and the accidents that happened, to the Wanderer from the time she left Inverness by train, till the day I find myself once more out on the breezy common of Streatham, with the horses’ heads bearing southward away!
But I am telling a plain unvarnished tale, not merely for the amusement of those who may do me the honour to read it, but for the guidance of those who may at some future date take it into their heads to enjoy a gipsy outing.
When I arrived in Glasgow the summer had so far gone, that it became a question with me whether I should finish my northern tour there and journey back to the south of England by a different route, or push on and cross the Grampians at all hazards, take the whole expedition, men, horses, and caravan, back by train to London, and tour thence down through the southern counties. The New Forest had always a charm for me, as all forests have, and I longed to take the Wanderer through it.
So I chose the latter plan, and for sake of the experience I gained – dark as it was – I do not now regret it.
I ought to say that the officials of all ranks belonging to the railway (North-Eastern route) were exceedingly kind and considerate, and did all for my comfort and the safety of the Wanderer that could be done. I shall never forget the pains Mr Marsters, of Glasgow, took about the matter, nor that of Mr McLean and others in Inverness.
The wheels were taken off the Wanderer as well as the wheel carriages, and she was then shipped on to a trolly and duly secured. The one great mistake made was not having springs under her.
Men and horses went on before, and the caravan followed by goods. In due time I myself arrived in town, and by the aid of a coachmaker and a gang of hands the great caravan was unloaded, and carefully bolted once more on her fore and aft carriages. Her beautiful polished mahogany sides and gilding were black with grime and smoke, but a wash all over put them to rights.
I then unlocked the back door to see how matters stood there. Something lay behind the door, but by dint of steady pushing it opened at last.
Then the scene presented to my view beggars description. A more complete wreck of the interior of a saloon it is impossible to conceive.
The doors of every cupboard and locker had been forced open with the awful shaking, and their contents lay on the deck mixed up in one chaotic heap – china, delft, and broken glass, my papers, manuscripts, and letters, my choicest photographs and best bound books, butter, bread, the cruets, eggs, and portions of my wardrobe, while the whole was freely besprinkled with paraffin, and derisively, as it were, bestrewn with blooming heather and hothouse flowers! Among the litter lay my little ammunition magazine and scattered matches – safety matches I need not say, else the probability is there would have been a bonfire on the line, and no more Wanderer to-day.
It seemed to me to be the work of fiends. It was enough to make an angel weep. The very rods on which ran the crimson silken hangings of the skylight windows were wrenched out and added to the pile.
It struck me at first, and the same thought occurred to the goods manager, that burglars had been at work and sacked the Wanderer.
But no, for nothing was missing.
Moral to all whom it concerns: Never put your caravan on a railway track.
It took me days of hard work to restore the status quo ante.
And all the while it was raining, and the streets covered with mud. The noise, and din, and dirt around me, were maddening. How I hated London then! Its streets, its shops, its rattling cabs, its umbrellaed crowds, the very language of its people. And how I wished myself back again on the wolds of Yorkshire, among the Northumbrian hills or the Grampian range – anywhere – anywhere out of the world of London, and feel the fresh, pure breezes of heaven blowing in my face, see birds, and trees, and flowers, and listen to the delightful sounds of rural life, instead of to cockney-murdered English.
Caravans like the Wanderer have no business to be in cities. They ought to give cities a wide, wide berth, and it will be my aim to do so in future.
The journey through London was accomplished in safety, though we found ourselves more than once in a block. When we had crossed over Chelsea Bridge, however, my spirits, which till now had been far below freezing point, began to rise, and once upon the common, with dwarf furze blooming here and there, and crimson morsels of ling (Erica communis), a balmy soft wind blowing, and the sun shining in a sky of blue, I forgot my troubles, and found myself singing once more, a free and independent gipsy.
But now to hark back a little. Who should meet me in London, all unexpectedly as it were, but “mamma”? I mean my children’s mother, and with her came my little daughter Inez! Long flaxen hair hath she, and big grey wondering eyes, but she is wise in her day and generation.
And Inez had determined in her own mind that she would accompany me on my tour through England – south, and be the little mistress of the land-yacht Wanderer.
So mamma left us at Park Lane, and went away home to her other wee “toddlers.” She took with her Polly, the cockatoo. It was a fair exchange: I had Inez and she had Polly; besides, one parrot is quite enough in a caravan, though for the matter of that Inie can do the talking of two.
A few silent tears were dropped after the parting – tears which she tried to hide from me.
But London sights and wonders are to a child pre-eminently calculated to banish grief and care, especially when supplemented by an unlimited allowance of ripe plums and chocolate creams.
Inez dried her eyes and smiled, and never cried again.
But if her cares were ended mine were only commencing, and would not terminate for weeks to come. Henceforward a child’s silvery treble was to ring through my “hallan,” (Scottice, cottage or place of abode) and little footsteps would patter on my stairs.
I was to bear the onus of a great responsibility. I was to be both “ma” and “pa” to her, nurse and lady’s maid all in one. Might not, I asked myself, any one or more of a thousand accidents befall her? Might she not, for instance, catch her death of cold, get lost in a crowd, get run over in some street, fall ill of pear and plum fever, or off the steps of the caravan?
I must keep my eye on her by night and by day. I made special arrangements for her comfort at night. The valet’s after-cabin was requisitioned for extra space, and he relegated to sleep on shore, so that we and Bob had all the Wanderer to ourselves.
I am writing these lines at Brighton, after having been a week on the road, and I must record that Inie and I get on well together. She is delighted with her gipsy tour, and with all the wonders she daily sees, and the ever-varying panorama that flits dreamlike before her, as we trot along on our journey. She nestles among rags on the broad coupé, or sits on my knee beside the driver, talking, laughing, or singing all day long. We never want apples and pears in the caravan – though they are given to us, not bought – and it is Inie’s pleasure sometimes to stop the Wanderer when she sees a crowd of schoolchildren, pitch these apples out, and laugh and crow to witness the grand scramble.
But some sights and scenes that present themselves to us on the road are so beautiful, or so funny, or so queer withal, that merely to laugh or crow would not sufficiently relieve the child’s feelings. On such occasions, and they are neither few nor far between, she must needs clap her tiny hands and kick with delight, and “hoo-oo-ray-ay!” till I fear people must take her for a little mad thing, or a Romany Rye run wild.
Such are the joys of gipsy life from a child’s point of view.
She eats well, too, on the road; and that makes me happy, for I must not let her get thin, you know. Probably she does get a good deal of her own way.
“You mustn’t spoil her,” ma said before she left. I’ll try not to forget that next time Inie wants another pineapple, or more than four ices at a sitting.
My great difficulty, however, is with her hair of a morning. She can do a good deal for herself in the way of dressing, but her hair – that the wind toys so with and drives distracted – sometimes is brushed out and left to float, but is more often plaited, and that is my work.
Well, when a boy, I was a wondrous artist in rushes. Always at home in woodland, on moor, or on marsh – I could have made you anything out of them, a hat or a rattle, a basket or creel, or even a fool’s cap, had you chosen to wear one. And my adroitness in rush-work now stands me in good stead in plaiting my wee witch’s hair.
Hurricane Bob is extremely fond of his little mistress. I’m sure he feels that he, too, has – when on guard – an extra responsibility, and if he hears a footstep near the caravan at night, he shakes the Wanderer fore and aft with his fierce barking, and would shake the owner of the footstep too if he only had the chance.
Our first bivouac after leaving London was in a kindly farmer’s stackyard, near Croydon. His name is M – , and the unostentatious hospitality of himself, his wife, and daughter I am never likely to forget.
I will give but one example of it.
“You can stay here as long as you please,” he said, in reply to a query of mine. “I’ll be glad to have you. For the bit of hay and straw your horses have you may pay if you please, and as little as you please, but for stable room – no.”
He would not insult my pride by preventing me from remunerating him for the fodder, nor must I touch his pride by offering to pay for stable room.
It was nearly seven o’clock, but a lovely evening, when I reached the gate of this farmer’s fine old house. Almost the first words he said to me as he came out to meet me on the lawn were these: “Ha! and so the Wanderer has come at last! I’m as pleased as anything to see you.”
He had been reading my adventures in the Leisure Hour.
We remained at anchor all next day, and Inez and I went to the Crystal Palace, and probably no two children ever enjoyed themselves more.
Next day was Saturday, and we started from the farm about eleven, but owing to a mishap it was two pm before we got clear of the town of Croydon itself.
The mishap occurred through my own absent-mindedness. I left the Wanderer in one of the numerous new streets in the outskirts, not far off the Brighton Road, and walked with Inez about a mile up into the town to do some shopping.
On returning, a heavy shower, a pelting shower in fact, came on, and so engrossed was I in protecting my little charge with the umbrella, that when I at last looked up, lo! we were lost! The best or the worst of it was that I did not know east from west, had never been in Croydon before, and had neglected to take the name of the street in which I had left the Wanderer.
It was a sad fix, and it took me two good hours to find my house upon wheels.
On through Red Hill, and right away for Horley; but though the horses were tired and it rained incessantly, it could not damp our spirits. At the Chequers Inn we found a pleasant landlord and landlady, and a delightfully quiet meadow in which we spent the Sabbath.
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.
