"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, about twenty yards, with a
thick joining band of yew between them.
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