(Cooks never can read maps.) After about two miles out of Fairford Robert began to ask.

There were no people on the road--indeed, one of the things that they had noticed throughout their travels was how few persons were to be met; and they had therefore to knock at a door here and there, or approach labourers in the fields.

Their ignorance of the name either of Lycett's or of Collins was amazing.
"Never heard tell of such a place," said one.
"Not hereabouts," said another.
"Collins ?" said a third.

"There's a stone-mason of that name over at Highworth; but I don't know of no farmer." "Maybe you're thinking of Sadler's," another suggested.
Robert, who was getting testy, asked why.

"Sadler's doesn't sound a bit either like Collins or Lycett's," he said.
"No," the man agreed, "it doesn't." But at last a butcher's boy on a bicycle came along, and Janet stopped him.
"Lycett's ?" he said.