In London it may be different, and I should say that a navvy would use it in a friendly manner. But from the Wallingford baker’s man on a country round it means “Poor ----,” perhaps even “Dirty ----.” By this time essays on walking and walking tours begin to wear very thin. You pitch Stevenson at any rate over the hedge, and cannot find a place suitable for ---- and ----. Borrow is safe, but then, he got really tired, and did not regard walking as an amusement. I have no doubt that he had learned to stick out his under-lip at the end of some of his marches. Nevertheless, stumping along on a shoeful of blisters is not bad when you are out of Royston and have Pen Hills upon your left; low, insignificant, restful stretches upon your right; and Odsey before you in the cool of evening. For some distance there was no hedge on the left side of the road beyond the town, and the turf, marked for many yards with tracks made before metalling, rose up to considerable swells of chalk cloven sometimes gently and sometimes abruptly into coombes, some smooth as lawns, some beautiful with trees. Tumuli were scattered over this smoothest sward, and down from the ridge of the high land came deep, curving trackways. At Odsey beyond they have found with Samian pottery the shin bones of men who ran instead of walking. People were walking for pleasure on the grass up above, and children were laughing somewhere near but out of sight. It was one of those delicious cool ends to perfect days which give a man the feeling of having accomplished something, but by no means compel him to inquire what. The road still possessed the hills even when it was enclosed on both sides, for it kept broad margins, the hedges were low between it and the grass or corn land, and it mounted higher and higher. They were the gentlest of chalk hills crested with trees--Thrift Hill, Gallows Hill, Crouch Hill, Pott’s Hill, Rain Hill, Wheat Hill, Windmill Hill, and Weston Hills--and at their highest points there were villages, like Therfield, Kelshall, Sandon, Wallington, Clothall, Weston. I had still four or five miles to walk at the feet of these hills, through a silence undisturbed by the few market carts at long intervals. I am glad now that I walked them. It seems to me now that my purely physical discomfort intensified the taste of the evening’s beauty, as it certainly made sweeter the perfection of enjoyment which I imagine possible at such an hour and in such a place. The road was serpentining very little, but enough to conceal from me for a long time the chief wayside marks ahead, as well as my destination. I could always see about a quarter of a mile before me, and there the white ribbon disappeared among trees. And this quarter-mile was agreeable in itself, and always suggesting something better beyond, though itself a sufficient end, if need were. Moreover, I was looking out for a house which I had never seen or heard described.