he 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 official 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.

On Kink's return, Robert urged them on, for he had marked down on his
map a spot called the Hollow, about five miles farther on,