"Sir Oswald, if you please, Plain Pilgrim," returned her brother,
dignifiedly. "Remember I'm a knight."
So then we sat down and had lunch, and Denny looked better. We played
adverbs, and twenty questions, and apprenticing your son, for a bit in
the shade, and then Dicky said it was time to set sail if we meant to
make the port of Canterbury that night. Of course, pilgrims reck not of
ports, but Dicky never does play the game thoughtfully.
We went on. I believe we should have got to Canterbury all right and
quite early, only Denny got paler and paler, and presently Oswald saw,
beyond any doubt, that he was beginning to walk lame.
"Shoes hurt you, Dentist?" he said, still with kind, striving
cheerfulness.
"Not much--it's all right," returned the other.
So on we went--but we were all a bit tired now--and the sun was hotter
and hotter; the clouds had gone away. We had to begin to sing to keep up
our spirits. We sang "The British Grenadiers" and "John Brown's Body,"
which is grand to march to, and a lot of others. We were just starting
on "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," when Denny stopped
short. He stood first on one foot and then on the other, and suddenly
screwed up his face and put his knuckles in his eyes and sat down on a
heap of stones by the road-side.
When we pulled his hands down he was actually crying. The author does
not wish to say it is babyish to cry.
"Whatever is up?" we all asked, and Daisy and Dora petted him to get him
to say, but he only went on howling, and said it was nothing, only would
we go on and leave him, and call for him as we came back.
Oswald thought very likely something had given Denny the stomach-ache,
and he did not like to say so before all of us, so he sent the others
away and told them to walk on a bit.
Then he said, "Now, Denny, don't be a young ass. What is it? _Is_ it
stomach-ache?"
And Denny stopped crying to say "No!" as loud as he could.
"Well, then," Oswald said, "look here, you're spoiling the whole thing.
Don't be a jackape, Denny. What is it?"
"You won't tell the others if I tell you?"
"Not if you say not," Oswald answered in kindly tones.
"Well, it's my shoes."
"Take them off, man."
"You won't laugh?"
"NO!" cried Oswald, so impatiently that the others looked back to see
why he was shouting. He waved them away, and with humble gentleness
began to undo the black tape sandals. Denny let him, crying hard all the
time.
When Oswald had got off the first shoe the mystery was made plain to
him.
"Well! Of all the--," he said in proper indignation.
Denny quailed--though he said he did not--but then he doesn't know what
quailing is, and if Denny did not quail then Oswald does not know what
quailing is either.
For when Oswald took the shoe off he naturally chucked it down and gave
it a kick, and a lot of little pinky yellow things rolled out. And
Oswald looked closer at the interesting sight. And the little things
were _split pease_.
"Perhaps you'll tell me," said the gentle knight, with the politeness of
despair, "why on earth you've played the goat like this?"
"Oh, don't be angry," Denny said; and now his shoes were off, he curled
and uncurled his toes and stopped crying. "I _knew_ pilgrims put pease
in their shoes--and--oh, I wish you wouldn't laugh!"
"I'm not," said Oswald, still with bitter politeness.
"I didn't want to tell you I was going to, because I wanted to be better
than all of you, and I thought if you knew I was going to you'd want to
too, and you wouldn't when I said it first. So I just put some pease in
my pocket and dropped one or two at a time into my shoes when you
weren't looking."
In his secret heart Oswald said, "Greedy young ass." For it _is_ greedy
to want to have more of anything than other people, even goodness.
Outwardly Oswald said nothing.
"You see," Denny went on,--"I do want to be good. And if pilgriming is
to do you good, you ought to do it properly. I shouldn't mind being
hurt in my feet if it would make me good for ever and ever. And besides,
I wanted to play the game thoroughly. You always say I don't."
The breast of the kind Oswald was touched by these last words.
"I think you're quite good enough," he said. "I'll fetch back the
others--no, they won't laugh."
And we all went back to Denny, and the girls made a fuss with him. But
Oswald and Dicky were grave and stood aloof. They were old enough to see
that being good was all very well, but after all you had to get the boy
home somehow.
When they said this, as agreeably as they could, Denny said:
"It's all right--some one will give me a lift."
"You think everything in the world can be put right with a lift," Dicky
said, and he did not speak lovingly.
"So it can," said Denny, "when it's your feet. I shall easily get a lift
home."
"Not here you won't," said Alice. "No one goes down this road; but the
high-road's just round the corner, where you see the telegraph wires."
Dicky 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.
[Illustration: "A DOG-CART WITH A YOUNG LADY IN IT"]
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 dog-cart 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
dog-cart was standing in the stable-yard, 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 footpads 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 court-yard 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 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 every one 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, armor and all, to the ground--"
"It would have been much cleverer," H. O. interrupted, "to hurl him
without his armor, 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 war-ships, 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.
Then the lady showed us the Danejohn, and it was like an oast-house. And
Canterbury walls that Alphege defied the Danes from looked down on a
quite common farmyard. The hospital was like a barn, and other things
were like other things, but we went all about and enjoyed it very much.
The lady was quite amusing, besides sometimes talking like a real
cathedral guide I met afterwards. (_See_ Note B.) When at last we said
we thought Canterbury was very small considering, the lady said:
"Well, it seemed a pity to come so far and not at least _hear_ something
about Canterbury."
And then at once we knew the worst, and Alice said:
"What a horrid sell!"
But Oswald, with immediate courteousness, said:
"I don't care. You did it awfully well."
And he did not say, though he owns he thought of it:
"I knew it all the time," though it was a great temptation. Because
really it was more than half true. He had felt from the first that this
was too small for Canterbury. (_See_ Note C.)
The real name of the place was Hazelbridge, and not Canterbury at all.
We went to Canterbury another time. (_See_ Note D.)
We were not angry with the lady for selling us about it being
Canterbury, because she had really kept it up first-rate. And she asked
us if we minded, very handsomely, and we said we liked it. But now we
did not care how soon we got home. The lady saw this, and said:
"Come, our chariots are ready, and our horses caparisoned."
That is a first-rate word out of a book. It cheered Oswald up, and he
liked her for using it, though he wondered why she said chariots. When
we got back to the inn I saw her dog-cart was there, and a grocer's cart
too, with B. Munn, grocer, Hazelbridge, on it. She took the girls in her
cart, and the boys went with the grocer. His horse was a very good one
to go, only you had to hit it with the wrong end of the whip. But the
cart was very bumpety.
The evening dews were falling--at least, I suppose so, but you do not
feel dew in a grocer's cart--when we reached home. We all thanked the
lady very much, and said we hoped we should see her again some day. She
said she hoped so.
The grocer drove off, and when we had all shaken hands with the lady and
kissed her, according as we were boys or girls, or little boys, she
touched up her horse and drove away.
She turned at the corner to wave to us, and just as we had done waving,
and were turning into the house, Albert's uncle came into our midst like
a whirling wind. He was in flannels, and his shirt had no stud in at the
neck, and his hair was all rumpled up and his hands were inky, and we
knew he had left off in the middle of a chapter by the wildness of his
eye.
"Who was that lady?" he said. "Where did you meet her?"
Mindful, as ever, of what he was told, Oswald began to tell the story
from the beginning.
"The other day, protector of the poor," he began, "Dora and I were
reading about the Canterbury pilgrims--"
Oswald thought Albert's uncle would be pleased to find his instructions
about beginning at the beginning had borne fruit, but instead he
interrupted.
"Stow it, you young duffer! Where did you meet her?"