ertainly might have been
worse.

On comparing notes at breakfast nearly everybody had had similar
experiences. Miss Strong confessed to a patent mattress with a broken
spring jutting up in the center, round which she had been obliged to lie
in a curve. Linda and Francie had slept near the water-cistern, which
alarmed them with weird noises, and Bess and Kitty, trying to open their
window wider, had found it lacked sash-cords, and descended like a
guillotine, sending the prop that had upheld it, flying into the street.
Though they groused at the time, the girls laughed as they discussed
these details over the eggs and bacon. The sun was shining and they felt
rested, and quite ready once more to shoulder their kit and set out on
the march.

There was nothing of very great interest to see in Dropwick itself,
though it was a quaint enough old-fashioned market-town, with a
fifteenth-century church tower, and a few black and white houses. Miss
Strong decided not to waste any time there, but to push on as fast as
possible across the hills to Sudbury, where there was a fine
Romano-British villa that was well worth a visit. So the foss-way took
them up, and up, and up, through fir-woods where the new cones were
showing like candles on Christmas trees, and alongside a quarry where
they pounced upon some quite interesting fossils in the heaps of stones
by the road, and over a craggy weather-worn peak, where, again, they
caught the magnificent view of the valley and the river and hills
beyond. Then down again, through more fir-woods, where the timber was
being felled, and great tree-trunks lay piled in rows one above another,
and past banks that were a dream, with starry blackthorn blossom and
primroses growing beneath, to where the cross-roads met and the signpost
pointed an arm to Sudbury.

The Romans might take their roads straight as an arrow across moor and
hill, but they chose out the beauty spots of the land on which to build
their villas, and were careful to fix upon a southern aspect and shelter
from the prevailing winds. The remains of the old settlement lay behind
a farm, and had been carefully excavated by a local antiquarian society.
Visitors applied at the farmhouse, entered their names in a book, paid
their admission money, and were escorted round by a guide.

Time, and successive conquests, had demolished the greater part of the
villa, but its foundations and some of the old brick walls could be
plainly traced.