Strolling out, Bunker and I consult certain shabby worthies who are yawning on the boxes of a long line of wretched hacks drawn up by the sidewalk across the street, and find that we can charter a vehicle for two shillings an hour.  These cabbies have more nearly the air of our own noble hackmen than any we have seen in England.  Americans are no novelty to them, for ship-loads of American tourists are put off here at frequent intervals, and the cabbies have a thin imitation of the voting hackman’s independence.  They stop short, however, of his impudence.  They are lazy, but they touch their hats occasionally.

We choose two of the tumble-down vehicles and go after the ladies.  My driver is an elderly man with a hat which has seen better days, and I have chosen his hack, not because it is less likely to drop off its wheels than the others, but because he himself looks like a seedy Bohemian.  He proves to be a very intelligent fellow, with a ready turn for description which serves him in good stead whenever his horse gets tired of walking and stops short.  At such times our Bohemian pretends that he has stopped the horse himself in order to point out and comment upon some curious thing in the immediate vicinity.

It is pleasant driving.  The hack is open, and we hoist sun-umbrellas and look about comfortably.  Presently the weary horse stops in the middle of the street.

“’Ere you are, sir,” says Cabby briskly, turning half round on his box and pointing to an old stone structure which stretches quite across the High street.  “This ’ere is the old Bar Gate, sir, one of the hancient gates of the town.  Part of the horiginal town wall.  Was a large ditch ’ere, sir, and another there, and a stone bridge betwixt the two, and the young bucks in them days did use to practice harchery right ’ere where you see the lamp-post.  The Guild’all is hin the gate, sir, right hinside it, with a passage hup.  I’ll drive through the harch, sir, and you’ll see the hother side.  Cluck!” (to the horse).

On the other side, the horse not taking a notion to stop again, the driver is not forced to resume his remarks.  Turning about as we pass on, we look up at the old Norman gate-tower, with its handsome archway and projecting buttresses, and Amy says she fancies she sees a knight in armor looking out through the narrow crevice which may have been a window in olden times.  This, being an altogether proper fancy for the place, is received with applause.

The next time the horse concludes to stop we are in the midst of what is here called the Common—­in fact, a magnificent old forest park, with a smooth road running through it, and numberless winding paths in among the bosky depths.  I fancy Central Park might come to look like this if allowed to go untrimmed and unfussed-over for two or three hundred years.

“The Common, sir,” says Cabby, turning about, “where King Chawles did use to ’unt wild boars.  Fav’rite walk of Halexander Pope, sir, the poet, and Doctor Watts, which wrote the ’ymn-book.  Cluck!”