After that we did converse a little, about Captain John Smith and Miles Standish, without Caspian venturing to butt in; but I must say he got revenge through my losing myself in Hingham. You remember that wonderful street of lawns and trees with a perfect specimen of an old church? I believe it's the oldest church, still in use, in the United States, but I dared not state this lest C. should seize the chance to snap me up and say I was mistaken. Well, anyhow, I shared so recklessly in Pat's admiration of the said church and the quaint, pleasant houses with flag-staffs sticking out over their doors, that I fulfilled Caspian's prophecy and got lost. The first thing I knew we were bumping over an appalling road, and had to turn back.
"I told you so!" I heard C. muttering like distant thunder, and asked him mildly if he preferred to take the wheel; but his finger was even more painful than his temper. I felt his glare like a gimlet in the back; but Pat more loudly than needful expressed her delight in seeing Hingham a second time. "It is exactly like Cranford," she said. "New England seems to be full of Cranfords, but Hingham is the most Cranfordy of all. And I don't believe even the Old England Cranford could have such elms in such a wonderful street. They are like tall, transparent green wine glasses set for a dinner party of Titans."
"You get these exaggerated ideas from Mrs. Winston," came another mutter from behind, but no reply was vouchsafed. Speaking of Mrs. Winston, I'd happened to hear her talking with her husband last night, about the day's run to Plymouth, and a word here and there had caught my attention. I remembered that a "sky pilot" named Hobart had come from Hingham in England, and somehow got the new place named after the old. I remembered, too, a romantic story they spoke of: the hiding of "The Nameless Nobleman" between the floors of a South Hingham house, and his marrying the girl who saved him, Molly Wilder. (Jack Winston thinks that all the nicest women since the Christian era have been named Mary.) I hurried to tell Pat about these things, and a few others which I either recalled or made up on the spot. While I talked, in defiance of orders, I somehow contrived to get onto a splendid road to Cohasset: woods for miles and miles; and an idea came into my head--which I passed on--that Abraham Lincoln's ancestors flourished in this region. So, to Scituate, though over a wrong road again (Pat called it "a dear little wrong road"), to Marshfield, where Daniel Webster died and was laid to rest. On the way we "guessed" that a detestable yellow house we saw, with a well and a bucket, were the house, well and bucket of Samuel Woodworth himself, the "Old Oaken Bucket" man. Caspian was sure it wasn't the house, and this seemed to make the darling Pat equally sure it _was_. (Don't you think from what I tell you that the signs and omens are good?)