“He was a talkative man and jabbered away the whole time as his horse meandered about the road. It saved us from having to construct a story for him, though by the time he left us in Banbury, I was most weary of smiling stupidly out from under my hat brim and trying not to squint. As his wagon pulled away, I turned to Holmes. “Next time we do this, I will play the deaf old woman and you can laugh at rude jests for an hour.”