At that welcome news, Liam Desmond sprang from the front bench seat and opened the door, jumping down to lower the folding metal steps for Lewrie, who was out not two seconds behind him, and walking round the head of the coach's team of four to take it all in, bare-headed.

"Ale, Pat!" Desmond cried. "The coachee and yer friend, too!"

"Ale, arrah!" Furfy chortled.

The Olde Ploughman fronted on the large village green that ran along the stream that bisected Anglesgreen, spanned just a bit west of the public house by a stout stone-arch bridge. Across the stream sat a second street, fairly new from the 1780s, once mostly earthen, mud and now and then gravelled. Now the street was cobbled, several row-houses had been turned into even more shops, and there were even more streets south of them, lined with even more of those handsome cottages, situated on spacious acre lots, with room enough for coach-houses and stables, chicken coops and runs, truck gardens, and walled-off lawns. Lewrie gawped in awe, slowly turning to look upstream towards the Red Swan Inn (where the squirearchy and landed gentry did their swilling, and Lewrie was most unwelcome) and found that the village had grown in that direction, too, though the smaller green of the Red Swan was yet untouched, and the groves of giant oaks still stood.

"Neat li'l place, an't it, Pat?" Desmond asked his mate.

"Fair-clean'un, too, Liam," Furfy replied, spreading his arms and expanding his chest to inhale deeply. "Nothin' like th' reeks o' London. Smells… farm-y… "

"A bit like our auld Maynooth, hey?" Desmond said with a grin.

"Smells ale-y," Furfy decided.

"Ale, aye," Lewrie announced. "Ale for all, 'fore we go on to the house."

Spiteful as Caroline's most-like t'be, I might as well go home foxed, Lewrie decided; it mayn't matter, one way'r t'other.