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And Denny stopped crying to say "No!" as loud as he could.
"Well, then," Oswald said, "look here, you're spoiling the whole thing. Don't be a jackape, Denny. What is it?"
"You won't tell the others if I tell you?"
"Not if you say not," Oswald answered in kindly tones.
"Well, it's my shoes."
"Take them off, man."
"You won't laugh?"
"NO!" cried Oswald, so impatiently that the others looked back to see why he was shouting. He waved them away, and with humble gentleness began to undo the black tape sandals. Denny let him, crying hard all the time.
When Oswald had got off the first shoe the mystery was made plain to him.
"Well! Of all the—," he said in proper indignation.
Denny quailed—though he said he did not—but then he doesn't know what quailing is, and if Denny did not quail then Oswald does not know what quailing is either.
For when Oswald took the shoe off he naturally chucked it down and gave it a kick, and a lot of little pinky yellow things rolled out. And Oswald looked closer at the interesting sight. And the little things were split pease.
"Perhaps you'll tell me," said the gentle knight, with the politeness of despair, "why on earth you've played the goat like this?"
"Oh, don't be angry," Denny said; and now his shoes were off, he curled and uncurled his toes and stopped crying. "I knew pilgrims put pease in their shoes—and—oh, I wish you wouldn't laugh!"
"I'm not," said Oswald, still with bitter politeness.
"I didn't want to tell you I was going to, because I wanted to be better than all of you, and I thought if you knew I was going to you'd want to too, and you wouldn't when I said it first. So I just put some pease in my pocket and dropped one or two at a time into my shoes when you weren't looking."
In his secret heart Oswald said, "Greedy young ass." For it is greedy to want to have more of anything than other people, even goodness.
Outwardly Oswald said nothing.
"You see," Denny went on,—"I do want to be good. And if pilgriming is to do you good, you ought to do it properly. I shouldn't mind being hurt in my feet if it would make me good for ever and ever. And besides, I wanted to play the game thoroughly. You always say I don't."
The breast of the kind Oswald was touched by these last words.
"I think you're quite good enough," he said. "I'll fetch back the others—no, they won't laugh."
And we all went back to Denny, and the girls made a fuss with him. But Oswald and Dicky were grave and stood aloof. They were old enough to see that being good was all very well, but after all you had to get the boy home somehow.
When they said this, as agreeably as they could, Denny said:
"It's all right—some one will give me a lift."
"You think everything in the world can be put right with a lift," Dicky said, and he did not speak lovingly.
"So it can," said Denny, "when it's your feet. I shall easily get a lift home."
"Not here you won't," said Alice. "No one goes down this road; but the high-road's just round the corner, where you see the telegraph wires."
Dicky and Oswald made a sedan-chair and carried Denny to the high-road, and we sat down in a ditch to wait. For a long time nothing went by but a brewer's dray. We hailed it, of course, but the man was so sound asleep that our hails were vain, and none of us thought soon enough about springing like a flash to the horses' heads, though we all thought of it directly the dray was out of sight.
So we had to keep on sitting there by the dusty road, and more than one pilgrim was heard to say it wished we had never come. Oswald was not one of those who uttered this useless wish.
At last, just when despair was beginning to eat into the vital parts of even Oswald, there was a quick tap-tapping of horses' feet on the road, and a dog-cart came in sight with a lady in it all alone.
We hailed her like the desperate shipwrecked mariners in the long-boat hail the passing sail.
She pulled up. She was not a very old lady—twenty-five we found out afterwards her age was—and she looked jolly.
"Well," she said, "what's the matter?"
"It's this poor little boy," Dora said, pointing to the Dentist, who had gone to sleep in the dry ditch with his mouth open as usual. "His feet hurt him so, and will you give him a lift?"
"But why are you all rigged out like this?" asked the lady, looking at our cockle-shells and sandals and things.
We told her.
"And how has he hurt his feet?" she asked.
And we told her that.
She looked very kind. "Poor little chap," she said. "Where do you want to go?"
We told her that too. We had no concealments from this lady.
"Well," she said, "I have to go on to—what is its name?"
"Canterbury," said H. O.
"Well, yes, Canterbury," she said; "it's only about half a mile. I'll take the poor little pilgrim—and, yes, the three girls. You boys must walk. Then we'll have tea and see the sights, and I'll drive you home—at least some of you. How will that do?"
We thanked her very much indeed, and said it would do very nicely.
Then we helped Denny into the cart, and the girls got up, and the red wheels of the cart spun away through the dust.
"I wish it had been an omnibus the lady was driving," said H. O., "then we could all have had a ride."
"Don't you be so discontented," Dicky said.
And Noël said:
"You ought to be jolly thankful you haven't got to carry Denny all the way home on your back. You'd have had to if you'd been out alone with him."
When we got to Canterbury it was much smaller than we expected, and the cathedral not much bigger than the church that is next to the Moat House. There seemed to be only one big street, but we supposed the rest of the city was hidden away somewhere.
There was a large inn, with a green before it, and the red-wheeled dog-cart was standing in the stable-yard, and the lady, with Denny and the others, sitting on the benches in the porch looking out for us. The inn was called the "George and Dragon," and it made me think of the days when there were coaches and highwaymen and footpads and jolly landlords, and adventures at country inns like you read about.
"We've ordered tea," said the lady. "Would you like to wash your hands?" We saw that she wished us to, so we said yes, we would. The girls and Denny were already much cleaner than when we parted from them.
There was a court-yard to the inn and a wooden staircase outside the house. We were taken up this, and washed our hands in a big room with a fourpost wooden bed and dark red hangings—just the sort of hangings that would not show the stains of gore in the dear old adventurous times.
Then we had tea in a great big room with wooden chairs and tables, very polished and old.
It was very nice tea, with lettuces and cold meat and three kinds of jam, as well as cake, and new bread, which we are not allowed at home.
While tea was being had the lady talked to us. She was very kind. There are two sorts of people in the world, besides others: one sort understand what you're driving at and the other don't. This lady was the one sort.
After every one had had as much to eat as they could possibly want, the