If it were not for its church, which has been re-built and has a very fine and tall spire, one might easily pass Widford and not know it, for the very few houses do not suffice to make a village. Such as it is, it stands on the crest of something not quite so much as a hill and rather more than an incline, and beside its large church has an equally fine and large and brand-new inn, the "White Horse." Time was, and that until three years since, when Widford was celebrated for its one other inn, the "Good Woman," or, as it was sometimes styled, the "Silent Woman"; a bitter jest emphasised by the picture-sign of a headless woman, with the inscription, _Fort Bone_, on one side, and a portrait of Henry the Eighth on the other. "_Fort Bone_" was commonly Englished by slangy cyclists as "good business." The sign, of course, was a pictorial and satiric allusion to Anne Boleyn, but it remains an open question whether or not in their present form this and the several other "Quiet Woman" and "Good Woman" signs throughout the country are perversions of the original legend, "_la bonne fame_" displayed on old inns in the distant past; an inscription laudatory of the hostelry, and matching the self-recommendation of "_la bonne rénommée_," found in modern France, or the more familiar "noted house for--" and "good pull up" inscriptions on inns in modern England. Virgil's description of Fame, walking the earth, her head lost to sight in the clouds, may have originated the pictorial sign of the headless woman in days of ancient learning; and the classic allusion becoming lost and the supposedly incorrect spelling of "_fame_" being altered to "_femme_," we thus obtain a very reasonable derivation. We may take it that many shrew-bitten folks, innkeepers and customers alike, readily agreed to forget the original meaning in order to adopt one so exactly fitting their opinion that the only quiet or good women were headless ones. [Illustration: THE "GOOD WOMAN" SIGN.] Unhappily, in that senseless itch for change that is robbing places of all interest and distinction, the sign of the "Good Woman" no longer swings from its accustomed place, and the bay-windowed inn opposite the "White Horse" has retired into private life. The picture sign is now housed inside the "White Horse." XVIII