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And, seeing that he had a Bradshaw and a good map, and had, moreover, six months ago addressed Julia's box of bulbs to her nearest railway town, it is not surprising that he found the whereabouts of the town of Halgrave. It was on Saturday night when he found it on the map; he was sitting in the coffee-room of a temperance hotel at the time.
"It was grown at Halgrave, too," she said; "that is not so very far from your part of Norfolk, is it?" "Fifteen or twenty miles," Rawson-Clew answered. "Is it so much as that?" she said; "I thought it was nearer; of course, then, you can't tell me anything about the grower."
"There is not anywhere much about here where he can go," she said; much less as if she were stating a fact than as if she were reviewing likely and unlikely places. "There is only the one road, and that goes to Halgrave, and there is nowhere for him there." "No, oh, no," Johnny said; "there really is nowhere there."
Johnny said "Yes." It certainly seemed likely enough; the ubiquitous motor-car went everywhere certainly; even, it was possible to imagine, to remote and uninteresting Halgrave. But along the ill-kept sandy road which led to White's Cottage and nowhere else, none had been yet, nor was it in the least likely that one would ever come except by accident. The sounds drew nearer.
Gillat used to also in the winter, but lately, during the spring, he had been induced to teach in the Sunday school, and now went every Sunday to the village, first to teach and afterwards to conduct his class to church. It was Mr. Stevens, the Rector of Halgrave, who had made this surprising suggestion to Mr. Gillat.
The next time he called upon his new friend, the veterinary surgeon, he was at a loss to understand this; it was unlike his previous experience of the man and most disagreeably surprising; he could not think why it should happen. But then he had not seen Julia set out for Halgrave on the afternoon of the same day that she explained things to him.
Be that as it may, it certainly was very solitary, rather far from the village of Halgrave, with no road leading to it except the track that came from Halgrave and stopped at the cottage gate there was nowhere to go beyond.
They had struck up an acquaintance the Captain had the family gift for that and the surgeon had asked him to come to his house on the other side of Halgrave. When the information reached this point Julia said suavely, but with meaning: "Perhaps you had better not go there again."
But the following morning she had to go to Halgrave about the killing of a pig; Johnny was hardly equal to making the necessary arrangements and certainly could not do so good as she.
He had done business for the day, and, seeing that the English do not care about working on Sundays, he would probably have to-morrow as well as to-night free. Julia's town was close a short railway journey, then a walk to Halgrave, and then one would be at her home it would be a pleasant way of spending the morning of a spring Sunday.
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