“What are the Lenches?” said Edwin, riding abreast. “Villages. Five of them, I think. There’s Rous Lench and King’s Lench and Abbot’s Lench, and two others. They’re a proper subject for a poem.” “Right-o . . . let’s collaborate,” said Edwin. “How’s this for a beginning?” “As I was riding through the Lenches I met three strapping country wenches.” And laughing together, they constructed a series of frankly indecent couplets, recording the voyager’s adventures with all three. It was a matter of the most complete collaboration, for the friends supplied alternate lines, outdoing one another in Rabelaisian extravagance. Edwin, however, provided the final couplet, which, he declared, gave the composition literary form:— “Home to my vicarage I hasted Feeling the day had not been wasted.” “A parson of the type of Herrick,” said Boyce. “Yes . . . but more serious.” “That kind of affair is awfully serious . . . at the time.” The gables of Evesham and its one tall tower swam in a golden dust. They drank cider in the inn courtyard, purchased a couple of Bath chaps at a grocer’s and crossed the Avon. Through an orchard country they rode in that hour of evening when bird-song is most wistful. The sun went down in a blaze of splendour behind Bredon Hill. The perfume of a beanfield swept across the road. “Good God, isn’t it good?” said Boyce. “We are nearly there.” A village of Cotswold stone half hidden in blossoms of crimson rambler received them. The gardens were full of sweet-williams, pale phloxes, and tall hollyhocks. “Straight on,” Boyce called. A sign-post pointed up the hill to Overton. They dismounted, and pushed their bicycles up a steep lane in the twilight. Bats were flitting everywhere, and a buff-coloured owl fluttered heavily between the overarching elms. A faint tinkle of trickling water came to their ears. “That is the sound of Overton,” said Boyce. “Slow water trickling in the night.” They slept together in the low-beamed room, so soundly that the sun was high before they wakened next morning. The week that now followed was the very crown of youth. The Boyce’s summer house stood upon a patch of terraced ground, being the highest of the three farms round which the hamlet of Overton clustered, and overlooked the blossomy vale of Evesham bounded by the Cotswold escarpment, blue and dappled with the shadows of cloud. “_Parva domus_: _magna quies_,” read the motto that Matthew’s father, the poet, had placed above the lintel of the door: “small house: great quietness”—and indeed it seemed to Edwin that there could be no quieter place on earth.