THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS
lady did go on. She told us all about Becket, and then about St. Alphege, who had bones thrown at him till he died, because he wouldn't tax his poor people to please the beastly rotten Danes.
And Denny recited a piece of poetry he knows called "The Ballad of Canterbury."
It begins about Danish war-ships, snake-shaped, and ends about doing as you'd be done by. It is long, but it has all the beef-bones in it, and all about St. Alphege.
Then the lady showed us the Danejohn, and it was like an oast-house. And Canterbury walls that Alphege defied the Danes from looked down on a quite common farm-yard. The hospital was like a barn, and other things were like other things, but we went all about and enjoyed it very much. The lady was quite amusing, besides sometimes talking like a real cathedral guide I met afterwards. (See Note B.) When at last we said we thought Canterbury was very small considering, the lady said:
"Well, it seemed a pity to come so far and not at least hear something about Canterbury."
And then at once we knew the worst, and Alice said:
"What a horrid sell!"
But Oswald, with immediate courteousness, said:
"I don't care. You did it awfully well."
And he did not say though he owns he thought of it:
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