wool-packs, with a cranny left between the curtains of the
awning to let in the air, was luxury to Hetty now, and she half-slept
away the hours till the driver came to ask her if she wanted to get down
and have "some victual"; he himself was going to eat his dinner at this
"public." Late at night they reached Leicester, and so this second day
of Hetty's journey was past. She had spent no money except what she
had paid for her food, but she felt that this slow journeying would be
intolerable for her another day, and in the morning she found her way
to a coach-office to ask about the road to Windsor, and see if it would
cost her too much to go part of the distance by coach again. Yes! The
distance was too great--the coaches were too dear--she must give them
up; but the elderly clerk at the office, touched by her pretty anxious
face, wrote down for her the names of the chief places she must pass
through. This was the only comfort she got in Leicester, for the men
stared at her as she went along the street, and for the first time in
her life Hetty wished no one would look at her. She set out walking
again; but this day she was fortunate, for she was soon overtaken by
a carrier's cart which carried her to Hinckley, and by the help of a
return chaise, with a drunken postilion--who frightened her by driving
like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and shouting hilarious remarks at her,
twisting himself backwards on his saddle--she was before night in the
heart of woody Warwickshire: but still almost a hundred miles from
Windsor, they told her. Oh what a large world it was, and what hard work
for her to find her way in it! She went by mistake to Stratford-on-Avon,
finding Stratford set down in her list of places, and then she was told
she had come a long way out of the right road. It was not till the fifth
day that she got to Stony Stratford. That seems but a slight journey as
you look at the map, or remember your own pleasant travels to and from
the meadowy banks of the Avon. But how wearily long it was to Hetty!
It seemed to her as if this country of flat fields, and hedgerows, and
dotted houses, and villages, and market-towns--all so much alike to her
indifferent eyes--must have no end, and she must go on wandering among
them for ever, waiting tired at toll-gates for some cart to come, and
then finding the cart went only a little way--a very little way--to the
miller's a mile off perhaps; and she hated going into the public houses,
where