England -- Antiquities, Roman; Hadrian's Wall (England); Walls, Roman -- England
Here I turned off to the left, to find the Near Boot Inn, and get
some tea. I had met with a small adventure near Tarraby, on my way
out in the morning. I had my lunch of sandwiches and biscuits in my
pockets, and I was standing by a field-gate, studying my
Ordnance-map, when suddenly there sprang upon me, out of the air
apparently, five greyhound pups. Pups though they were, their
forepaws reached to my shoulders. They were all over me in a moment;
and, my {194} hands being encumbered with the map, in saving that I
never gave a thought to my pockets. Their noses led them straight
there, and before I realized what they were about they had divided my
lunch between them, and were coming back for more! They loved me so
dearly after that that I could not get rid of them for the distance
of several fields.
In consequence of this I had had nothing since breakfast but the "pot
o' milk" at Bleatarn, so I sought the Inn at Tarraby very hopefully.
But the landlady was not nearly so sure that she wanted to give me
some tea as I was that I wanted to have it. She did not actually
refuse, but she did all she could to discourage me. She seemed to
think that if she was the _Near Boot_, then I was certainly the "off
leg"! She had a bad headache, and she hadn't any cake, nor any
cream, nor much of anything apparently.
However, I took "a deal o' discouraging," and I sat on in the parlour
and waited, for she had said: "Well, anyhow, I must attend to these
men first."
As I looked at the pictures on the parlour walls, an idea suddenly
dawned on me.
Every picture represented a prize greyhound!
When the landlady returned, I remarked casually that I was very
hungry because my lunch had been stolen by five greyhound pups, and
of course I avoided showing the least tinge of resentment or
annoyance (having felt none!) She did not say {195} much, but I
noticed a change in her manner, and when the tea did appear there
were eggs and cake and pastry, to say nothing of cream, and home-made
bread and butter and jam. And, to crown all, when I inquired for the
headache, she said, "Do you know, it has gone!"
So I did full justice to her tea, while the men in the next room were
telling each other what horses they had backed for the Derby, and how
much they had lost.
Later, I learned that the landlord of the _Near Boot_ was a noted
breeder of greyhounds.
From Tarraby the path along the Wall leads through a wicket-gate into
a pasture, with a cinder-path along the hedge, and in this hedge
Wall-stones are clearly seen. Then we go between two close-clipped
hedges of hawthorn and beech, with growing crops, or plantations of
baby trees, on either side. This brings us out at Stanwix
(Stane-wegges: a place upon the "stone way").
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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