The arrival of Kink at half-past six was a great relief.Robert hailed him, and Kink said it was a beautiful morning.
"Don't you get up yet," he said, after Robert and Janet had both told him of the night."I'll make the fire and boil the kettle, and fetch water, and so on, and you get up when I tell you.Otherwise, you'll all be too tired and get ill."And so they had the blessed experience of lying still and drowsy, and hearing Kink move about for their comfort.
The boys were up first, and made extremely noisy toilets in the washing-up basin, and then Jack and Gregory went off to the farm for milk and butter and eggs, and Mrs.Gosden, who seemed, early as it was, to be in the very middle of a day's work, and who refused to believe that the boys were not deceiving her when they denied having sore throats, gave them leave to gather strawberries, so that their return to the Slowcoach was a new triumph.
Their breakfast was chiefly scrambled eggs, ham, and strawberries, and by ten o'clock, true to their bargain, they were out of the field and on the highroad, and no sign of their camp remained, save a black circle caused by the fire and a slight crushing of the grass all round it.
They had gone a very little way before Robert, who had already been to Woodstock with the morning telegram, began to realize that he was in for a blister on his left heel, and, on asking the others, he found that they were not too comfortable either.
"This means," he told Mary, speaking to her in her oflicial capacity of Regulator of Rests, "that we shall have to ride a good deal, because we simply must go twelve miles today, or we shan't be at Stratford in time for mother tomorrow afternoon."Mary therefore ordered them in and out of the Slowcoach with great frequency, but it was not a great deal of use, for they hobbled more and more.
At Enstone they stopped for lunch, which consisted of a tongue and bananas and ginger beer; and here they met a friendly tinker, drinking his ale outside the inn, who, noticing their lameness, gave them some good advice.
"If you can't stop and rest," he said, "you should soap your stockings, and it's a good thing now and then to change the stockings from left to right.
They found that the soap was really useful, and got on much better, and a little later they were overtaken by two young men on a walking tour, who slowed down to fall into step for a while with Robert and Jack.One gave them some hints."When you are very tired," he said, "it helps to hold something in front of you at full length--even a walking stick will do, or a coat rolled up.It pulls you along.You look like an idiot, of course, but that doesn't matter.No one who minds looking foolish will ever have a really good time.It is a good thing to prevent a stitch in your side to carry a little pebble in your mouth.Squeezing a cork in each hand helps.""Another way to make walking easier," said the other young man, "is to sing as you go.All sing together--marching songs, if you know any, such as 'Tramp, boys, tramp.' That's what soldiers do on long marches, and it makes all the difference."They didn't take the road to Chipping Norton, but stopped at the town, while Kink, who had no blisters, went into the town to get the evening's dinner; and meanwhile Janet persuaded the Beatrice stove to give them tea.
It was while here that they had their first experience of Diogenes as a guardian, for he frightened away two tramps who seemed likely to be troublesome.
