passage, and would stick to the ship while a plank held. It was impossible to make anything satisfactory out of this strangely-assorted couple, and the task was abandoned in despair long before the weary stretch of road had been traversed that led northward over the brown moorland past the door of the "Hamilton Arms."
The lady was tired—the lady would alight. Though their places were taken for several miles further, she and her domestic would remain here. It was impossible she could proceed. Were these rooms vacant?
Rooms vacant! Mrs. Dodge, in a pair of enormous earrings, with the gold cross glittering on her bosom, lifted her fat hands in protestation. Theoretically, she never had a corner to spare in which she could stow away a mouse; practically, she so contrived that no wealthy-looking traveller ran a risk by "going further—of faring worse." On the present occasion "she was very full," she said. "Never was such markets; never was such a press of customers, calling here and calling there, and not to be served but with the best! Nevertheless, madam should have a room in five minutes! Alice, lay a fire in the Cedars. The room was warm and comfortable, but the look-out (into the stable-yard) hardly so airy as she could wish. Madam would excuse that—madam" Here Mrs. Dodge, who was no fool, pulled herself short up. "She begged pardon. Her ladyship, she hoped, would find no complaints to make. She hoped her ladyship would be satisfied!"
Her ladyship simply motioned towards the staircase, up which Alice had run a moment before with a red-hot poker in her hand, and, preceded by Mrs. Dodge, retired to the apartment provided for her, while a roar of laughter, in a tone that seemed not entirely strange, reached her ears from the bar, into which her new retainer had just dragged her luggage from off the coach.
Now the Marquise, though never before in England, was not yet ignorant of the general economy prevailing at the "Hamilton Arms," or the position of its different apartments. She had still continued her correspondence with Malletort, or rather she had suffered him to write to her, as formerly, when he chose.
