LITERARY INNKEEPER'S ADVENTURE
night, for to tell you the truth I have had no company for a week."
I pulled myself up on the parapet of the bridge and filled my pipe. I began to detect an ally.
"You've young to be an innkeeper," I said.
"My father died a year ago and left me the business. I live there with my grandmother. It's a slow job for a young man, and it wasn't my choice of profession."
"Which was?"
He actually blushed. "I want to write books," he said.
"And what better chance could you ask?" I cried. "Man, I've often thought that an innkeeper would make the best story-teller in the world."
"Not now," he said eagerly. "Maybe in the old days when you had pilgrims and ballad-makers and highwaymen and mail-coaches on the road; but not now. Nothing comes here but motor-cars full of fat women, who stop for lunch, and a fisherman or two
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