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Go on." "Well, sir, I built a boat on the plan given, and spent a holiday one year on the Broads. It drew very little water, and was easily managed. However, you know all that. But what I was thinking about was a design for a larger boat of the kind, with a propeller attached to it which could be worked by lever." "By a lever?"
They did not laugh at his conversation nor mock his proffered hospitalities. They talked to him, persuaded him that his soul was in jeopardy, and carried him off during part of the Long Vacation to the Norfolk Broads, where prayer-meetings, collisions with other sea-faring craft, and tinned meats were the order of the day.
"This," sighed the old lady, wagging her head with a smile of sour satisfaction "is what you call a day's pleasure, is it? Ah, what fools we all were to leave our comfortable homes!" Meanwhile the boat floated smoothly along the windings of the watery labyrinth which lay between the two Broads. The view on either side was now limited to nothing but interminable rows of reeds.
He walked across the bar, called for some whisky, and, while it was being served, addressed a friendly remark to the nearest group to him. One of the men, a white-bearded, keen-eyed Norfolk man, answered his question civilly enough. He had asked about wild fowl shooting in the neighbourhood, and the old man had been a water bailiff on the Broads in his younger days.
Many a night I had come there to the same spot and gazed with wistful eyes at that prospect; for though I was, in a manner, familiar with the old town, and had gone in there on market days many a time since I was a boy, yet, at this hour, and seen across the water in the bright blaze of the sunset, it seemed to be strangely removed and glorified like that city which Christian had a prospect of from the Delectable Mountains and I could never think of it as other than an enchanted region, the gate of the great world, where the hours throbbed with action, and life was more full and splendid than in our lonely grange among the broads; and my heart was fretted within me, and day by day the longing grew upon me to break out of the narrow limits in which my life was bound, and take my way thither into the glamour and the mystery of the world.
"These fools," said he, "know naught of the fens or the Broads, and they will believe all that they see; for the broken bits and the footprints will speak to them of the young lord and his serving-man, and they will listen and hasten on. It is easy to lead a fool a chase."
The view too was superb, across to the Broads and the Molecatcher, or back to the Dreot Woods, or to the dim towers of Polchester Cathedral. The air here was fine one of the healthiest spots in Glebeshire. The farm to-day was transfigured by the misty glow; cows and horses could be faintly seen, ricks burnt with a dim fire.
Philippa sat enthralled by the beauty of the country through which she passed. The wide-spreading cornfields, the cosy flint farm-houses, with their red roofs, the byres and orchards, the glitter of the placid Broads lying calm and serene under the summer sun, reeds and rushes reflected as in a mirror on the water, which was so still that hardly a ripple disturbed its even surface.
I went out of doors feeling that London must be a very terrible place, if the folk there went about counting all who met them as possible enemies. I was homesick for the Broads, where everybody, even bad men, like the worst of the smugglers, was friendly to me. I hated all this noisy city, so full of dirty jumbled houses.
And would ye seek out once more the knaves ye did stun, and try to lead them astray, even down into the Broads? And all to keep them from the king?" The two servants grinned. "And would ye make believe to be on the trail of Hugo and Humphrey here? And would ye lead them far from the trail? I see that ye would, knaves that ye are. I have discovered ye.
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