And now, if your man has finished, I expect you'd like to be gettin' on, or the others will be nervous about you." And so, after Hester had chosen Circe, they all said very affectionate farewells, and the Slowcoach rumbled forth again.
Meanwhile, what of Janet and Robert and Mary and Jack and Horace?
They had had no adventures at all--nothing but scenery and a pleasant picnic.
Robert had been rightly told about the summit of Bredon Hill, for there the grass is as short as on the South Downs, and there is a deep fosse in which to shelter from the wind.
The hill at this western point ends suddenly, at a kind of precipice, and you look right over the valley of the Avon and the Severn to the Malverns.

Just below on the south-west is Tewkesbury, where the Severn and the Avon meet, after that becoming the Severn only all the way to Bristol and the sea.

In the far south-west rises the point of the Sugar Loaf at Abergavenny, and the blue distance is Wales--the country of King Arthur and Malory.
To the north-west is the smoke of Worcester, and immediately beneath the hill, winding shiningly about, is the Avon, running by Bredon village and the Combertons and Pershore, past Cropthorne (where Mr.
MacAngus was perhaps even now painting) and Wood Norton (where the Duke of Orleans, who ought, Hester held, to be King of France to-day, lives) to Evesham, and the weir where they had rowed about, and so on to Stratford.
Robert's maps, fortified by what he had picked up from the old man last night, told them all these things, and told them also, more or less, what the "coloured counties" were that they could see; for of course Mary wanted to know that: Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Monmouthshire.

After lunch Mary sang the beautiful Bredon Hill song to them; and so they descended to the level ground and to Kink and Hester and Gregory, little expecting to find them with such exciting things to tell.
From Beckford to Oxenton the great story lasted, eked out with questions and answers as it proceeded.

Thus, Horace wanted to know why Kink had not sprung to the horses' heads and checked them in their wild career.
"We couldn't see them," said Gregory; "they were coming up behind, and we were sitting in front." Horace was dissatisfied.
"What frightened them ?" Jack wanted to know; but Gregory could not say.
Patricia had not explained.
"Fancy not knowing what frightened them!" said Jack.
The fact was that both Jack and Horace were a little overtired, and perhaps a little jealous of the eventfulness of the Slowcoach's day.
They had been talking so hard that they had not noticed the sky; and the splashing of raindrops was the first knowledge they had that a storm was coming.