She nosed up unparochial byways and accommodation-
roads of the least accommodation, and put old scarred turf or new-raised
molehills under her most marvellous springs with never a jar. And since
the King's highway is used for every purpose save traffic, in mid-career
she stepped aside for, or flung amazing loops about, the brainless driver,
the driverless horse, the drunken carrier, the engaged couple, the female
student of the bicycle and her staggering instructor, the pig, the
perambulator, and the infant school (where it disembogued yelping on
cross-roads), with the grace of Nellie Farren (upon whom be the Peace) and
the lithe abandon of all the Vokes family. But at heart she was ever Judic
as I remember that Judic long ago--Judic clad in bourgeois black from
wrist to ankle, achieving incredible improprieties.
We were silent--Hinchcliffe and Pyecroft through professional
appreciation; I with a layman's delight in the expert; and our guest
because of fear.
At the edge of the evening she smelt the sea to southward and sheered
thither like the strong-winged albatross, to circle enormously amid green
flats fringed by martello towers.
"Ain't that Eastbourne yonder?" said our guest, reviving. "I've a aunt
there--she's cook to a J.P.--could identify me."
"Don't worry her for a little thing like that," said Pyecroft; and ere he
had ceased to praise family love, our unpaid judiciary, and domestic
service, the Downs rose between us and the sea, and the Long Man of
Hillingdon lay out upon the turf.
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