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And then they had tea at a nice inn at Uffington, in a parlour full of photograph frames, and returned to the station. As the train left, they leaned back in their seats, a great deal more tired than they had ever been in the Slowcoach. "What a hateful rate this train goes at!" said Robert. "I prefer two miles an hour." "Oh, yes," they said.
Alas! alack! we're coming back." They caught a train on the funny little branch-line which turned them out at Uffington, and, armed with Mr. Scott's present, "The Scouring of the White Horse," which Mary carried and occasionally read scraps from as they walked along, they made for the green hills and the famous animal cut on their side.
Well, Farringdon is where he lived, before he went to sea; his real name was Hamden Pye, and the Pyes were the great folk at Farringdon. Then there's Pusey. And the splendid old cross church at Uffington, the Uffingas town. How the whole countryside teems with Saxon names and memories!
It was on the uplands between dawn and sunrise that Malvina made the acquaintance of the Arlington twins. They ought, of course, to have been in bed all three of them, for the matter of that. The excuse for the twins was their Uncle George. He had been telling them all about the Uffington spectre and Wayland Smith's cave, and had given them "Puck" as a birthday present.
"William, Earl of Craven, Viscount Uffington, and Baron Craven of Hamstead Marshall, owns Combe Abbey in Warwickshire, where is to be seen the finest water-jet in England; and in Berkshire two baronies, Hamstead Marshall, on the façade of which are five Gothic lanterns sunk in the wall, and Ashdown Park, which is a country seat situate at the point of intersection of cross-roads in a forest.
Along some of our hillsides are curious turf-cut monuments, which always attract our gaze and make us wonder who first cut out these figures on the face of the chalk hill. There is the great White Horse on the Berkshire Downs above Uffington, which we like to think was cut out by Alfred's men after his victory over the Danes on the Ashdown Hills.
In the chalk-cliffs, near Uffington, in Berkshire, is carved an enormous figure of a horse, more than 300 feet in length; which, the common people say, was executed in commemoration of a victory that King Alfred gained over the Danes in that neighbourhood.
He reflects the utmost credit on his grooms; for not only are his shapely limbs "beautifully and wonderfully made," but the greatest care is taken of him. The Westbury horse is not in reality nearly so large as this one at Uffington, but he is a very beautiful feature of the country.
Besides their home games, on Saturdays the boys would wander all over the neighbourhood; sometimes to the downs, or up to the camp, where they cut their initials out in the springy turf, and watched the hawks soaring, and the "peert" bird, as Harry Winburn called the gray plover, gorgeous in his wedding feathers; and so home, racing down the Manger with many a roll among the thistles, or through Uffington Wood to watch the fox cubs playing in the green rides; sometimes to Rosy Brook, to cut long whispering reeds which grew there, to make pan-pipes of; sometimes to Moor Mills, where was a piece of old forest land, with short browsed turf and tufted brambly thickets stretching under the oaks, amongst which rumour declared that a raven, last of his race, still lingered; or to the sand-hills, in vain quest of rabbits; and bird-nesting in the season, anywhere and everywhere.
Almost beneath them stood the reverend church of Uffington overtopping the ancient village clustering round it. Numerous other towers and spires could be seen peeping out of groves of trees, which, together with the scattered mansions and farmhouses surrounded by granges and stacks of hay and beans, gave interest and diversity to the prospect.
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