"

But at last a butcher's boy on a bicycle came along, and Janet stopped
him.

"Lycett's?" he said. Then he brightened. "Lickets, perhaps you mean.
That's up the next turning to the left. I don't know who's got it,
because I'm a stranger here, but I've heard that Lickets lies that way."

So Robert was recalled from a distant meadow where he had seen a man
working, and they hurried on.

The turning was not a main road, but a long lane, which was so narrow
that nothing else could possibly have passed by had they met anything;
and for a while nothing did come. And then suddenly at a bend there was
a fat farmer driving a dogcart straight at them.

He pulled up at once, and roared out: "Where be you coming to, then? We
don't want no gipsies here."

Kink stopped too, and the farmer and he glared at each other.

"You must back down to the next gate," said the farmer.

"Back yourself," said Kink. "Your load's lighter than mine."

"But it's my land you're on," said the farmer.

"It's a public road," said Kink.

It looked as though they might stay there for ever, but suddenly the
farmer began to laugh. "Why, you're not gipsies," he said. "I believe
you're Avories."

"That's so," said Kink.

"Well, I'm blessed!" the farmer cried. "And to think we should be
falling out when I've been waiting to see you these many days! My
name's Pescod. My halfsister's your cook."

Mr. Pescod climbed out of his cart and shook hands with all the
children. "Now I'll turn," he said, with a smile to Kink, and he led
his horse up the lane, talking all the while, while the Slowcoach
followed. They told him about their difficulty in finding any trace of
him, and he called Collins a donkey for not directing them better, and
forgetting to say that her name and his were different.

"Never mind," he said; "here you are at last. We've been looking out
for you for a long time. My missis never hears wheels nowadays but what
she runs to the door to see if it's you."

Lycett's farm was a long, low, white house with a yew hedge leading
from the garden gate to the front door. This hedge, of which Collins
had told them, was famous in the neighbourhood; for it was enormously
old, and as thick almost as masonry, and it was kept so carefully
clipped that it was as smooth also as a wall. At the gate itself the
yews were cut into tall pillars with a pheasant at the top of each, and
then there were smaller pillars at intervals all the way up the path,