de shot through with rattiness, and under
its influence nourishment dies in one with painful celerity.

The blessed word "inn" was however on the ordnance map, and since it was
the one-inch scale that cannot lie we braced ourselves, mended and remended
our tempers, and plodded on. The dales no doubt are gorgeous places, but
under this grey humid sky anyone who wanted it could have had my share of
Billsdale (as I believe it was). Scenery had become an outrage. There was
no joy, no beauty; nothing was worth living for but that inn. As we
laboured forward we cheered each other by word-pictures of its parlour, its
larder and its cellar. A pork-pie ("porch-peen" I fancy the Yorkshiremen
call it) would probably be there. Eggs, of course. A ham, surely. Bacon, no
doubt. Yellow butter, crusty new bread, and beer. Indeed, let the rest go,
so long as there was beer. But beer, of course, was beyond any question; an
inn without beer was unthinkable.

Thus the miles wore away until, footsore, sticky and faint, we came upon
the hostelry itself--only to find, instead of any grateful sign and the
promise of delight, the frigid words, "Friends' Meeting House," painted on
the board....

That was one experience, over which a veil may well be drawn. The other was
not so long ago, in Sussex, a little before the War. This time we had not
walked, but had done that much more hungrifying thing--we had been for
hours in a motor-car, exceedingly engaged on the task of looking at houses
to let. At last, utterly worn out, in the way that motoring can wear out
body, soul and nerves, and filled with a ravening desire to tear meat limb
from limb, we came to an inn of which our host had the highest opinion--so
high, indeed, that, empty though we were, he had forced the car at
full-speed past at least half-a-dozen admirable but less pretentious
houses, where I, in my small way, had more than once been nourished and
sustained.

When, however, at last we did arrive at his desired haven, late in the
afternoon, when dusk was beginning to fall and blur with her gentle hand
the sharp lines of hill and tree, we acknowledged his wisdom, for in the
window beside the door, where we creakingly but joyfully alighted, were
visible, although no longer distinctly, a vast ham as yet uncut and two
richly-browned cold fowls. "There," said he, with a pardonable triumph,
"didn't I tell you?" and so, our lips trembling with the anticipation of
nutriment, we entered, flun