So far good; but in surmounting the difficulty, half an hour had been wasted. It was nearly two o'clock; they were barely half way to Lewes. The patient Watkyns, holding the door for them to enter, advised that they could not now be in before four. "If then," he added ominously. "I fear, my lady, the ford on this side of Chayley is like to be deep. I don't know how 'twill be, my lady, but we'll do our best."
"You must not drown us!" Lady Betty cried gaily; but had better have held her tongue, for her woman, between damp and fright, began to cry, and was hardly scolded into silence.
So, half-past two, which should have seen them at Lewes, found them ploughing through heavy mud at a foot's pace behind sobbing horses; the rain, the roads, and the desolate landscape, all bearing out the evil repute of Sussex highways. Abreast of the windmill at Plumpton by-road they found dry going, which lasted for half a mile, and the increase of speed cheered even the despairing Pettitt. But at the foot of the descent they stuck fast once more, in a hole ill-mended with faggots; and for a fair hundred yards the men had to push and pull. They lost another half-hour here, so that it wanted little of half-past three when they came, weary and despondent, to the ford below Chayley, about six miles short of Lewes. The grooms were mired to the knees, Watkyns was little better, all were in a poor humour. Lady Betty's woman clung and screeched on the least alarm; and on all the steady drizzle and the heavy road had wrought depressingly.
"Shall we have difficulty in crossing?" Sophia asked nervously, as they drew towards the ford, and saw a brown line of water swirling athwart the road. A horseman and two or three country folk were on the bank, gauging the stream with their eyes.
Watkyns shook his head. "I doubt it's not to be done at all, my lady," he said. "Here's one stopped already, unless I am mistaken."
"But we can't stay here," Sophia protested, looking with longing at the roofs and spire that rose above the trees beyond the stream. On the bank on which they stood was a single hovel of mud, fast melting under the steady downpour.
"I'll see what they say, my lady," Watkyns answered, and leaving the carriage thirty paces from the water, he went forward and joined the little group that conferred on the brink. The grooms moved on also, while the leading postboy, standing up in his stirrups, scanned the current with evident misgiving.