BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 17 



CHAPTER II. 



There are no suburbs to Welshpool. Practical, 

 like its countrywomen, it does not trail a modish 

 skirt across the meadows ; the woods and hedge- 

 rows run down to it, but it will not change its 

 working-dress and come up from its hollow to be 

 idle with them. Of this, indeed, we were not dis- 

 posed to complain, when at some three of the 

 clock on the next afternoon we started on the 

 first stage of our journey. We had received, in 

 the act of departure, an amount of interest and 

 attention that would have satiated, not to say 

 embarrassed, a sandwich-man — from the congre- 

 gated friends of the chemist and ironmonger, from 

 the old Yorkshire woman (framed like a Holbein 

 behind the glass of a firmly closed window), from 



B 



