That which led to
Cowfold was under the control of the parish, and in winter-time was
very bad indeed. When you looked down it it seemed as if it led
nowhere, and indeed the inhabitants of the town were completely shut
off from any close communication with the outer world. How strange
it was to emerge from the end of the lane and to see those wonderful
words, "To LONDON," "To YORK!" What an opening into infinity! Boys
of a slightly imaginative turn of mind--for there were boys with
imagination even in Cowfold--would, on a holiday trudge the three
miles eastward merely to get to the post and enjoy the romance of
those mysterious fingers. No wonder; for the excitement begotten by
the long stretch of the road--London at one end, York at the other--
by the sight of the Star, Rover, Eclipse, or Times racing along at
twelve miles an hour, and by the inscriptions on them, was worth a
whole afternoon's cricket or wandering in the fields. Cowfold itself
supplied no such stimulus. The only thing like it was the mail-cart,
which every evening took the letters from the post-office,
disappeared into the dark, nobody could tell whither, and brought
letters in the morning, nobody could tell whence, before the
inhabitants were out of bed.
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