Dickie and Oswald made a sedan chair and carried Denny to the high road, and we sat down in a ditch to wait. For a long time nothing went by but a brewer's dray. We hailed it, of course, but the man was so sound asleep that our hails were vain, and none of us thought soon enough about springing like a flash to the horses' heads, though we all thought of it directly the dray was out of sight.
So we had to keep on sitting there by the dusty road, and more than one pilgrim was heard to say it wished we had never come. Oswald was not one of those who uttered this useless wish.
At last, just when despair was beginning to eat into the vital parts of even Oswald, there was a quick tap-tapping of horses' feet on the road, and a dogcart came in sight with a lady in it all alone.
We hailed her like the desperate shipwrecked mariners in the long-boat hail the passing sail.
She pulled up. She was not a very old lady--twenty-five we found out afterwards her age was--and she looked jolly.
'Well,' she said, 'what's the matter?'
'It's this poor little boy,' Dora said, pointing to the Dentist, who had gone to sleep in the dry ditch, with his mouth open as usual. 'His feet hurt him so, and will you give him a lift?'
'But why are you all rigged out like this?' asked the lady, looking at our cockle-shells and sandals and things. We told her.
'And how has he hurt his feet?' she asked. And we told her that.
She looked very kind. 'Poor little chap,' she said. 'Where do you want to go?'
We told her that too. We had no concealments from this lady.
'Well,' she said, 'I have to go on to--what is its name?'
'Canterbury,' said H. O.
'Well, yes, Canterbury,' she said; 'it's only about half a mile.
I'll take the poor little pilgrim--and, yes, the three girls. You boys must walk. Then we'll have tea and see the sights, and I'll drive you home--at least some of you. How will that do?'
We thanked her very much indeed, and said it would do very nicely.
Then we helped Denny into the cart, and the girls got up, and the red wheels of the cart spun away through the dust.
'I wish it had been an omnibus the lady was driving,' said H. O., 'then we could all have had a ride.'
'Don't you be so discontented,' Dicky said. And Noel said--'You ought to be jolly thankful you haven't got to carry Denny all the way home on your back. You'd have had to if you'd been out alone with him.'
When we got to Canterbury it was much smaller than we expected, and the cathedral not much bigger than the Church that is next to the Moat House. There seemed to be only one big street, but we supposed the rest of the city was hidden away somewhere.
There was a large inn, with a green before it, and the red-wheeled dogcart was standing in the stableyard and the lady, with Denny and the others, sitting on the benches in the porch, looking out for us. The inn was called the 'George and Dragon', and it made me think of the days when there were coaches and highwaymen and foot-pads and jolly landlords, and adventures at country inns, like you read about.
'We've ordered tea,' said the lady. 'Would you like to wash your hands?'
We saw that she wished us to, so we said yes, we would. The girls and Denny were already much cleaner than when we parted from them.
There was a courtyard to the inn and a wooden staircase outside the house. We were taken up this, and washed our hands in a big room with a fourpost wooden bed and dark red hangings--just the sort of hangings that would not show the stains of gore in the dear old adventurous times.
Then we had tea in a great big room with wooden chairs and tables, very polished and old.
It was a very nice tea, with lettuces, and cold meat, and three kinds of jam, as well as cake, and new bread, which we are not allowed at home.
While tea was being had, the lady talked to us. She was very kind.
There are two sorts of people in the world, besides others; one sort understand what you're driving at, and the other don't. This lady was the one sort.
After everyone had had as much to eat as they could possibly want, the lady said, 'What was it you particularly wanted to see at Canterbury?'
'The cathedral,' Alice said, 'and the place where Thomas A Becket was murdered.'
'And the Danejohn,' said Dicky.
Oswald wanted to see the walls, because he likes the Story of St Alphege and the Danes.
'Well, well,' said the lady, and she put on her hat; it was a really sensible one--not a blob of fluffy stuff and feathers put on sideways and stuck on with long pins, and no shade to your face, but almost as big as ours, with a big brim and red flowers, and black strings to tie under your chin to keep it from blowing off.
Then we went out all together to see Canterbury. Dicky and Oswald took it in turns to carry Denny on their backs. The lady called him 'The Wounded Comrade'.
We went first to the church. Oswald, whose quick brain was easily aroused to suspicions, was afraid the lady might begin talking in the church, but she did not. The church door was open. I remember mother telling us once it was right and good for churches to be left open all day, so that tired people could go in and be quiet, and say their prayers, if they wanted to. But it does not seem respectful to talk out loud in church. (See Note A.)
When we got outside the lady said, 'You can imagine how on the chancel steps began the mad struggle in which Becket, after hurling one of his assailants, armour and all, to the ground--'
'It would have been much cleverer,' H. O. interrupted, 'to hurl him without his armour, and leave that standing up.'
'Go on,' said Alice and Oswald, when they had given H. O. a withering glance. And the lady did go on. She told us all about Becket, and then about St Alphege, who had bones thrown at him till he died, because he wouldn't tax his poor people to please the beastly rotten Danes.
And Denny recited a piece of poetry he knows called 'The Ballad of Canterbury'.
It begins about Danish warships snake-shaped, and ends about doing as you'd be done by. It is long, but it has all the beef-bones in it, and all about St Alphege.
