86 THE EXETER ROAD 



rendered Staines a town of inns. Gone, too, is the 

 ' Bush,' and others, although not demolished, have 

 either retired into private life, or are disguised as 

 commonplace shops. The ' Angel ' still remains, 

 but not the ' Blue Boar,' kept, according to Dean 

 Swift, by the quarrelsome couple, Phyllis and John. 

 Phyllis had run away from home on her wedding- 

 morn with John, who w^as her father's groom, and a 

 good-for-naught. At the inn they were installed at 

 last, John as the drunken landlord, Phyllis as the 

 kind landlady : — 



They keep at Staines the Old Blue Boar, 

 Are cat and dog — 



and other things unfitted for ears polite. 



The church is without interest, luit there lies in 

 its churchyard, among the other saints and sinners, 

 Lady Letitia Lade, the foul-mouthed cast-off cliere 

 aiiiie of the Prince Regent, who married her off to 

 John Lade, his coachman, whom he knighted for his 

 complaisance. 



XIY 



Staines is no sooner left behind than we come to 

 Egham, once devoted almost wholly to the coaching 

 interest, then the scene of sul)urban race-meetings, 

 and now that those blackguardly orgies have been 

 suppressed, just a dead-alive suburb — dusty, un- 

 interestino-. The old church has been modernised, 



