But there were compensations, and one, perhaps the best of
all, was that this method of seeing the country made us more
intimate with the people we met and stayed with. They were
mostly poor people, cottagers in small remote villages; and
we, too, were poor, often footsore, in need of their
ministrations, and nearer to them on that account than if we
had travelled in a more comfortable way. I can recall a
hundred little adventures we met with during those wanderings,
when we walked day after day, without map or guide-book as our
custom was, not knowing where the evening would find us, but
always confident that the people to whom it would fall in the
end to shelter us would prove interesting to know and would
show us a kindness that money could not pay for. Of these
hundred little incidents let me relate one.
It was near the end of a long summer day when we arrived at a
small hamlet of about a dozen cottages on the edge of an
extensive wood--a forest it is called; and, coming to it, we
said that here we must stay, even if we had to spend the night
sitting in a porch. The men and women we talked to all
assured us that they did not know of anyone who could take us
in, but there was Mr. Brownjohn, who kept the shop, and was
the right person to apply to. Accordingly we went to the
little general shop and heard that Mr. Brownjohn was not at
home. His housekeeper, a fat, dark, voluble woman with
prominent black eyes, who minded the shop in the master's
absence, told us that Mr.
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