They were talking about roads at the “Morning Star” on the left side of the “Papist Way.” The fat drayman and the smart butcher’s boy agreed that motor-cars were ruining the good roads. The rubber wheels can travel on the smoothest possible surface, which is the modern ideal. Hoofs, on the other hand, need something to bite into. The drayman, with his heavy waggon, would do away with steam-rollers. Here the needy cyclist interrupted, and said that he had never known better times; the smooth roads were as good for him as for motor-cars. All cursed their dust, their stink, their insolence, and all looked with some admiration at the foreign-looking chauffeur who came in for a glass and out again in a minute. Outside, the flies were “terrifying” the horses for the first time in the summer, and the drivers inside yelled at them, but seldom moved from their beer. One driver was a man with big, red ears, and a serious, quizzical face, with a beard. He came in wearing a fine musk thistle, which he seemed to think was Scotch, but immediately on being given a bunch of sweet peas he threw it away. If this had been his preference it would have been absurd enough--as if a musk thistle were not better than all the sweet peas ever contrived by man and God!--but he took the garden flowers because they were things having a price, and because they were a gift. [Illustration: By Lollingdon Farm.] The “Papist Way” was a hard road winding between wheat and beans for half a mile. Then it crossed the Wallingford and Cholsey road, and was interrupted by the railway embankment. Its course on the farther side of this seemed to be marked by a division between barley and potatoes to the left of the present road. This line was continued through Pancroft farm-yard, from which a path went south-westward along the hedges to Lollingdon. This was over black, rushy lands haunted by pewits. The road a little on the left, leading also to Lollingdon Farm, was on better ground, winding westward under the wooded swell of the round hill called Lollingdon Hill. The farm had a big home meadow with ash and poplar enclosing it, almost as if it had been a quadrangle with cloisters round. There were many thatched farm buildings in the corner, and a fine walnut tree and a beautiful abundance of poppies and dusty nettle and dusty mallow against the walls. The road had an elmy hedge on its right, but nothing on the left between it and the oats that reached up to the beeches of Lollingdon Hill-top. The long grass and knapweed and succory by the roadside were blossoming with white and meadow-brown butterflies, which flew away from their stalks as ducklings swim away from their unamphibious foster-mothers. The butterflies flew after one another, sometimes a white after a brown. The sun was perfect for them, there being fewer clouds than there were eight hours back--for as I walked I heard a pleasant, gong-like bell strike two at Aston.