However, my companion plunged promptly _in medias res_ when, at the Junction, the train allowed us a few minutes on the loose, and we contrived to get our luggage out of the consignment labelled for Tours--though it was at the very bottom of all the other trunks--and transferred into the Bordeaux train, while I secured from the buffet a basket of pears, some rolls and cold chicken, flanked by a bottle of _vin ordinaire_. And, while on the subject of _vin ordinaire_, though there is an old, well-worn saying to the intent that "good wine needs no bush," yet I cannot help planting a little shrub to the honour of the wine of the country in the fair country of the Gironde. Without exception, I found it excellent, and I can say in all sincerity, that I do not desire a better meal or better wine to wash it down, while travelling, than is put before one in the restaurants of Bordeaux and the neighbourhood, especially in the country villages. Seldom have I spent happier meal-times than were those I passed opposite the two sentinelling bottles, one of white wine, the other of red, which flanked (without money and without price) the simple, excellently-cooked, second _déjeuner_ or _table d'hôte_, whichever it might chance to be. Dr. Thomas Fuller, of blessed memory, has left behind the wise injunction that no man should travel before his "wit be risen." An addendum might very well be added that he should not travel before his judgment be up as well, and if Englishmen, who travel so much more in body than in spirit, always saw to it that both their "wit" and their judgment accompanied them to valet their mental equipment on their travels, their somewhat insular views as regards foreign ways of doing things, and foreign productions (such as the much, and unjustly, decried _vin ordinaire_, for instance,) would be brushed up and cleared of the cobwebs of tradition that are, in so many cases, over them even in the present year of grace. To return, after this digression. After leaving Blois, the land was mapped out in larger squares of vineyards, in which a different kind of vine was growing: taller and bigger than the ones we had passed earlier in the day. These were dark brown in leafage, topped by a sort of flowery head. At the head of all the trees, that were denuded of foliage, there was a little round cap of yellow leaves, growing conically, and presenting a very curious effect when seen on the verge of a distant line of landscape. In France trees are assisted and instructed in their manner of growth.