MARY JANE MARRIED
UNIFORM WITH THE PRESENT VOLUME.
_Post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth, 2s. 6d._
MARY JANE’S MEMOIRS.
By GEORGE R. SIMS.
_WITH A PHOTOGRAPHED PORTRAIT OF MARY JANE._
“A quite Defoe-like revelation. It is, in effect, a series of social
sketches drawn by a keen and humorous observer. Can be heartily
recommended to all and sundry.”--_Globe._
“A very entertaining autobiography.... Mary Jane has a faculty for
observing character, and a power of delineating its movements and
development, not distantly related to those of Mr. Sims himself. Mary
Jane has so full a fund of exciting incident to draw upon, and so
pleasant a manner of philosophizing, in her homely way, upon the ups and
downs of a servant’s life, that should she ever take the field as a
novelist independently of her present sponsor, he will have a formidable
rival to contend with.”--_Scotsman._
“Mr. Sims has portrayed in an amusing manner the trials, woes, and
triumphs of domestic servants. There is such an amount of truthfulness
in the narrative that we can almost accept the portrait of Mary Jane as
that of the authoress of the memoirs Mr. Sims is supposed to edit, and
to believe that it is really genuine.”--_Metropolitan._
“There are some pages in these memoirs which it is impossible to read
without laughing heartily, while the chapters devoted to the account of
the Chelsea mystery are almost tragic in their intense realism....
Dickens never did anything better than ‘Mrs. Three-doors-up,’ or ‘Mr.
Saxon, the author, and his mother-in-law.’. The book is full of
unvarnished naturalism of a healthy, sensible, wholesome kind. It is
quite the best thing Mr. Sims has yet written.”--_Whitehall Review._
“Those who have not yet made Miss Buffham’s acquaintance will here find
in her a very entertaining narrator of vast experiences in the way of
domestic service.”--_Daily News._
“Much of the book is broad comedy, and most laughter-provoking, and
reminds one of the best of the famous ‘Mrs. Brown.’. Generally, the book
is remarkable for its Defoe-like verisimilitude, and added to this is an
inexhaustible fund of humour and broad though harmless fun.”--_Public
Opinion._
“Genuine amusement awaits the public in the perusal of Mary Jane’s
experiences, edited by the popular writer who has put them into book
form. This view of the world from the housemaid’s pantry is full of
shrewd observation and apparently unconscious humour, and is throughout
diverting.”--_Morning Post._
“Mary Jane’s experience of domestic service makes a very entertaining
book. She sees some strange things, and describes them in a lively,
good-tempered way.”--_St. James’s Gazette._
“Mr. Sims is a clever story-teller, but he is to be admired for his
philanthropic spirit even more than for his artistic skill. Mary Jane’s
observations are shrewd and suggestive. There is a realistic tone about
the whole which makes these records interesting.”--_Congregational
Review._
ALSO BY GEORGE R. SIMS.
_Each the same size and prices._
=ROGUES AND VAGABONDS.=
=THE RING O’ BELLS.=
_LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY._
MARY JANE MARRIED
TALES OF A VILLAGE INN
BY
GEORGE R. SIMS
AUTHOR OF “MARY JANE’S MEMOIRS,” “THE DAGONET BALLADS,”
“ROGUES AND VAGABONDS,” “THE RING O’ BELLS,” ETC.
[Illustration: colophon]
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1888
[_The right of translation is reserved_]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MARY JANE EXPLAINS 1
II. THE SQUIRE’S ROOM 15
III. MISS WARD’S YOUNG MAN 28
IV. THE REVEREND TOMMY 43
V. THE LONDON PHYSICIAN 57
VI. MR. AND MRS. SMITH 71
VII. MR. SAXON’S GHOST 84
VIII. MRS. CROKER’S “NO. 2” 99
IX. OLD GAFFER GABBITAS 112
X. DASHING DICK 127
XI. OUR ODD MAN 141
XII. TOM DEXTER’S WIFE 155
XIII. A LOVE STORY 168
XIV. THE YOUNG PLAY-ACTOR 183
XV. THE BILLIARD MARKER 196
XVI. THE SILENT POOL 210
XVII. THE OWEN WALESES 223
XVIII. MR. WILKINS 236
XIX. ONE OF OUR BARMAIDS 250
XX. MR. SAXON AGAIN 263
XXI. THE VILLAGE WITCH 277
XXII. CONCLUSION 291
MARY JANE MARRIED.
CHAPTER I.
_MARY JANE EXPLAINS._
It is no use my trying to stop myself. I’m sure I’ve tried hard enough.
When I changed my name from Mary Jane Buffham to Mary Jane Beckett by
marrying Harry, my sailor sweetheart (God bless him!), I said to
myself--Now, Mary Jane, my girl, no more pens and ink. You’ve written a
book and had it published, and the newspaper gentlemen have been most
kind in what they said about it. You’d better be satisfied with that,
and do your duty in that state of life unto which you have been called,
that state being mistress of a sweet little hotel--inn, some people will
call it, but it’s quite as much right to be called an hotel as lots of
places that have “Hotel” up in big letters all over them--in a pretty
village not very far from London. Of course I have enough to do, though
Harry takes a good deal off my shoulders; but there are so many things
that a landlady can do to make a house comfortable that a landlord
can’t, and I take a great pride in my dear little home, and everybody
says it’s a picture, and so it is. Harry says it’s my training as a
thorough servant that makes me such a good mistress, and I dare say it
is. Our house is called “The Stretford Arms,” and we put “Hotel” on the
signboard underneath it soon after we had it, and made it pretty and
comfortable, so that people--nice people--came to stay at it.
But, oh dear me, before we got it what a lot of trouble we had! If you
have read my “Memoirs” you know all about me and Harry, and how I left
service to marry him, and he made up his mind--having a bit of money
saved, and some come to him from a relative--to take a nice little inn
in the country; not a public-house, but something better, with plenty of
garden to it for us to have flowers, and fruit, and fowls, and all that
sort of thing; and we made up our minds we’d have one with a porch and
trellis-work, and roses growing over it, and lattice windows, like we’d
seen in a play before we were married.
We hadn’t gone into business when my book came out in a volume. When the
publisher sent me a copy, I thought, “Oh, how proud I shall be when I
show this to Harry!” I declare I could have cried with rage when I took
the brown paper off and saw the cover. It was most wicked, and upset me
awfully. There on the cover was a picture of me sitting in my kitchen
with a horrid, grinning policeman, with his arm round my waist. I threw
the book on the floor, the tears streaming down my face. It was such a
bitter disappointment.
Harry came in while I was crying, and he said, “Why, my lass, what’s the
matter with you?” And I sobbed out, pointing to the book, “Look at that,
Harry!” Harry picked the book up, and when he saw the cover his face
went crimson under the sunburn.
He said, “Did this ever happen, Mary Jane?” and I said, “No, Harry. Do
you think I would ever have demeaned myself like that?”
He looked at the grinning idiot of a policeman for a minute, and then he
brought his fist down hard right on his nose (the policeman’s). Then he
said, “Put it out of my sight, and never let me see it again.” But
presently he said, “There must be something about you and a policeman in
the book, or they wouldn’t have put him hugging you on the cover. Which
chapter is it? I’ll read it and see what the truth of this business is.”
I recollected then that there _was_ something about a policeman, so I
said, “No, Harry, dear, don’t read it now; you’re not in a fit state of
mind. But whatever there is, I swear he didn’t sit in my kitchen with
his arm round my waist; and he--he--he wasn’t--a grinning idiot like
that.”
I took the book away from Harry, and wouldn’t let him see it then. But
he kept on about it all the evening, and I could see it had made him
jealous as well as savage; and it was very hard--all through that horrid
picture the pleasure I had looked forward to was quite spoilt. But so it
is in this world; and how often it happens that what we have been
longing for to be a pleasure to us, when it comes is only a
disappointment and a misery!
Harry said to me that evening that he would go to London and see the
publishers, and have it out with them about the picture. He said it was
a libel on my character, and he wasn’t going to have his wife stuck
about on all the bookstalls in a policeman’s arms. But, I said to him,
the publishers didn’t mean any harm, and it was no good being cross with
them, or making a disturbance at their office.
But some time afterwards I wrote a little note to Messrs. Chatto and
Windus about it, and Mr. Chatto wrote back that he was very sorry the
picture had caused words between me and my husband, and, in the next
editions, it should be altered, and soon after that he sent me a proof
of the new cover, and it was Harry with his arm round my waist instead
of the policeman, which makes all the difference.
There were many things that I shouldn’t have written, perhaps, if I’d
been quite sure that they would be published, and my husband would read
them; but, after all, there was no harm, and I only wrote the truth. I
wrote what I saw, and it was because it was the real experience of a
real servant that people read it, and, as I have reason to know, liked
it. And now, after I have been landlady of a village hotel, doing a nice
trade both in the bar and in the coffee-room (why coffee-room, I don’t
know, for there is less coffee drunk in it than anything), I find myself
putting down what I have seen and heard on paper, just as I did in my
“Memoirs.”
People say to me sometimes, “Law, now, fancy your noticing that!--I
never did;” and that’s the secret of my being an authoress, I suppose. I
keep my eyes open, and my ears too; and if I see a character, I like to
watch it, and find out all about it.
I’ve seen some strange characters in our inn, I can tell you; and as to
the people in the village, why, when you come to know their stories, you
find out that every place is a little world in itself, with its own
dramas being played out in people’s lives just the same as in big towns.
Yes, there are village tragedies and village comedies, and the village
inn is the place to hear all about them. I haven’t got an imagination,
so I can’t invent things, and I think it’s a good thing for me, because
I might be tempted to make up stories, which are never so good as those
that really happen. I thought when I came to this village I should have
nothing to write about, but I hadn’t been in it long before I found my
mistake. I hear a lot, of course, in the bar-parlour, because it’s like
a club, and all the chatty people come there of an evening and talk
their neighbours over, and I hear lots more in the house from the market
women and from our cook and the people about the place, and I can
promise you that I have learnt some real romances of real life--rich and
poor, too--since I became the landlady of the ‘Stretford Arms.’
We didn’t get into the place all at once. Oh dear me, what an anxious
time it was till we found what we wanted! and the way we were tried to
be “done,” as Harry calls it, was something dreadful. Harry said he
supposed, being a sailor, people thought he didn’t know anything; but
when we came to compare notes with other people who had started in the
business, we found our experiences of trying to become licensed
victuallers was quite a common one.
We had a beautiful honeymoon first; but I’m not going to write anything
about that, except that we were very happy--so happy that when I thanked
God for my dear, kind husband and my happy life, the tears used to come
into my eyes. But all that time is sacred. It is something between two
people, and not to put into print. I don’t think a honeymoon would come
out well in print. It is only people who are having honeymoons who would
understand it.
After we had had a nice long honeymoon, Harry began to think it was
time we looked out for something; so he said, “Now, little woman, this
is all very nice and lazy and lovely, but we must begin to think about
the future. The sooner we look for a place the better.”
So every day we read the advertisements in the papers of public-houses
and inns and hotels in the country which were for sale.
Whenever we saw “nice home,” or “lovely garden,” or “comfortable home
just suited to a young married couple,” we wrote at once for full
particulars. When we wrote to the agents about the best ones, I found
that it was very like the paragon servants advertised--they had just
been disposed of, but the agent had several others equally nice on hand
if we would call.
It was very annoying to find all the “lovely gardens” and “charming
homes,” which were so cheap, just gone, and to get instead of them
particulars of a horrid place at the corner of a dirty lane, with only a
back yard to it, or something of that sort.
We went to see some of the places the agents or brokers sent us, and
they were very much nicer in the advertisements than they were in
themselves.
One house we went to look at we thought would do, though the situation
seemed lonely. We wrote we would come to see it on a certain day, and
when we got there, certainly there was no mistake about its doing a good
trade. They asked a lot of money for it, but the bar was full, and in
the coffee-room were men who looked like farmers having dinner and
ordering wine, and smoking fourpenny cigars quite fast. And while we
were having dinner with the landlord in his room, the servant kept
coming in and saying, “Gentleman wants a room, sir,” till presently all
the rooms were gone, and people had to be turned away.
“It’s like that now nearly always,” said the landlord. “If it wasn’t
that I must go out to Australia, to my brother, who is dying, and going
to leave me a fortune made at the diggings, I wouldn’t part with the
house for anything.”
“Where do the people all come from?” said Harry. “The station’s two
miles off.”
“Oh,” said the landlord, “there’s something against the Railway
Hotel--it’s haunted, I believe, and this last month everybody comes on
here. If you like to start the fly business as well, you’ll make a lot
of money at that. Flys to meet the trains would fill you up every day.”
We went away from the house quite convinced that it was a great bargain,
and Harry said he thought we might as well settle with the agents, for
we couldn’t do better.
But when we got to the station we had just missed a train, and had an
hour to wait, so we went to the Railway Hotel. I sat down in a little
room, and had some tea, while Harry went into the smoke-room to hear the
talk, and see if he could find out about the place being haunted, and if
it was likely to be haunted long.
In half an hour he came back looking very queer. “Mary Jane,” he said,
“that swab ought to be prosecuted”--meaning the landlord of the inn we
had been after.
Then he told me what he’d found out in the smoke-room, hearing a man
talk, who, of course, didn’t know who Harry was. He was making quite a
joke about what he called the landlord’s “artful dodge,” and he let it
all out.
It seems the place we had been after had been going down for months, and
the landlord had made up his mind to get out of it before he lost all
his capital. So to get a good price he had been getting a lot of loafers
and fellows about the village to come in and have drinks with him and
fill up the place, and the day we came nobody paid for anything, and the
farmers in the coffee-room were all his friends, and it was one man who
kept taking all the bedrooms that the servant came in about when we were
there.
Wasn’t it wicked? But it opened our eyes, and showed us that there are
tricks in every trade, and that we should have to be very careful how we
took a place by its appearance.
But, cautious as we were after that, we had one or two narrow escapes,
and I may as well tell you something about them as a warning to young
people going into business. Of course we laughed at the tricks tried to
be played on us, because we escaped being taken in, but if we had
invested our money and lost it all in a worthless concern, we shouldn’t
have been able to laugh. Perhaps Harry would have had to get another
ship, and I should have had to get another situation, and be a servant
again. And a nice thing that would have been with my ba----
But I must not anticipate events. I know more about writing now than I
did when I put my “Memoirs” together, and I’m going to see if I can’t
write a book about our inn, and our village, and all that happened in
them, without troubling the gentleman who was so kind to me over my
first book. I wish he had seen to the outside as well as the inside, and
prevented that nasty, impertinent, grinning policeman behaving so
disgracefully in my kitchen on the cover.
I say we can afford to laugh now; and there are many things in life to
laugh at when we are on the safe side that we might cry at if we
weren’t. I know that I always laugh when people say about me not having
changed my initials, but being Mary Jane Beckett instead of Mary Jane
Buffham, and they quote the old proverb:
“Change your name and not the letter,
Change for the worse and not the better.”
I laugh, because I _have_ changed for the better; and Harry’s as good as
gold and as gentle as a baby--well, a good deal gentler, for I shouldn’t
like Harry to pull my hair, and put his finger in my eye, and kick me
like my ba----
But I am anticipating again.
I was writing about the houses we went to look at before we fixed on the
‘Stretford Arms.’ There was one not quite in the country, but out in a
suburb of London--a new sort of a suburb: rather melancholy, like new
suburbs are when some of the houses are only skeletons, and the fields
are half field and half brickyard, and old iron and broken china lie
scattered about, with a dead cat in a pond that’s been nearly used up
and just shows the cat’s head; and a bit of rotten plank above the inch
or so of clay-coloured water. And there’s generally a little boy
standing on the plank, and making it squeeze down into the water and
jump up again, and smothering himself up to the eyes in squirts of the
dirty, filthy water, which seems to be quite a favourite amusement with
little suburban boys and girls. I suppose it’s through so much building
always going on.
We went to look at a nice house, that certainly was very cheap and
nicely fitted up, in this new suburb; and there was a fair garden and a
bit of a field at the back. It stood on the high-road, or what would be
the high-road when the suburb was finished, and we were told it would
one day be a fine property, as houses were letting fast, and all being
built in the new pretty way; you know what I mean--a lot of coloured
glass and corners to them, and wood railings dotted about here and
there, something like the Swiss Cottage, where the omnibuses stop--Queen
Anne, I think they call them.
We wanted to be more out of town, but we heard such glowing accounts
from the broker about this place, we hesitated to let it go. The
landlord, we were told, was giving up the business because he had to go
to a warmer climate for the winter, being in bad health, and, having
lost his wife, he had nobody to leave behind to look after the place. If
ever you try to take a business, dear reader, I dare say you will find,
as we did, that the people who are going to sell it to you never give up
because things aren’t good, but always because they’ve made so much
money they don’t want any more, or because they have to go and live a
long way off. I suppose it wouldn’t do to be quite truthful in
advertising a business for sale, any more than in giving a servant a
character. If the whole truth and nothing but the truth was told in
these cases, I fancy very few businesses would change hands and very few
servants get places.
We had only seen this house in the new suburb once on a very fine day in
the autumn, and it looked very nice, as I told you; but, as luck would
have it, we made up our minds to go down without saying we were coming,
one wet Saturday afternoon. “Let’s see how it looks in bad weather,”
said Harry. So I put on my thick boots and my waterproof, and off we
went.
Certainly that new suburb didn’t look lively in the rain. The mud was up
to your ankles in the new roads, and the unfinished houses looked soaked
to the skin, and seemed to steam with the damp.
When we got to the house we went in and asked for the landlord. “He’s
very ill in bed,” said the barmaid, who had her face tied up with a
handkerchief.
“What’s the matter with him?” said Harry.
“Rheumatics,” said the barmaid. “He’s regular bent double, and twisted
into knots with it.”
The barmaid didn’t know us or our business, so Harry gave me a look not
to say anything, and then he got the girl on to talk about the house.
“House!” she said, putting her hand to her swollen face; “‘tain’t a
house; it’s a mausolium--it’s a mortchery. Why, the cat as belongs to
the place can’t hardly crawl for the rheumatiz. And the master, who came
here a healthy, upright young man a year ago, he’s a wreck, that’s what
he is, and the missis died here. If he don’t sell the place and get out
of it soon he’ll die here too.”
“And how long have you been barmaid here?” asked Harry.
“Oh, I ain’t the regular barmaid. She’s gone away ill. I’m the
’ousemaid; but I serve in the bar when any one wants anything, which
isn’t often now, for the people declare as they catch cold only standing
in the place.”
“What’s the matter with it?” I asked.
“What’s the matter with it?” said the girl. “Why, damp’s the matter with
it. It was built wet, and it’ll never get dry. And there ain’t no
drainage yet; and when it rains---- Well, you should see our cellars!”
“I think I will,” said Harry, “if you’ll allow me;” and by pitying the
girl, and one thing and another, Harry managed to get her to let him see
the cellars.
It was really something shocking. The cellars were full of water, and
the beer and the spirits were actually floating about.
“It’s only on days when it’s pouring wet we get like that,” said the
girl; “but the damp’s always in the house.”
“Yes,” said Harry, “it would be.” With that he finished his glass of
beer and biscuit, and said “Good day,” without troubling to leave word
for the landlord that he had called.
“My dear,” he said, when we got outside, “I don’t think this place’ll
do. I want a business ashore, not afloat.”
“Oh, Harry,” I said, almost with a little sob, for it did seem as if we
were never to be dealt fairly with--“oh, Harry,” I said, “isn’t it
dreadful? Fancy that we might have gone into that place and died there
for all these people cared.”
“Self-preservation, my dear,” said Harry; “it’s only a natural thing, if
you come to think of it. This poor fellow wants to get out, and to get
himself out he must let somebody else in. So long as he doesn’t die
there, it doesn’t much matter to him who does.”
I didn’t answer, but I felt quite sad all the way home. It seemed to me
that life was one great game of cheat your neighbour, and I began to
wonder if to get on in business we should have to cheat our neighbours
too. And that evening, when we were in our lodgings, sitting by the nice
cosy fire, and I was doing my work, and Harry was smoking his big brown
meerschaum pipe, I told him how sad I felt about all this trickery and
deceit, and I asked him if perhaps there might not be some business that
we could buy that wasn’t so full of traps and dodges as the public-house
business. He shook his head, and said, “No. He was sure a nice little
country inn was what would suit us, and it was only a question of
waiting a little, and keeping our wits about us, and we should get what
we wanted, and be none the worse for the experiences we picked up in the
search.”
And we did pick up some experiences, and I wish I had time to write them
all out: I am sure that hundreds of thousands of pounds of hard-earned
money would be saved, and many suffering women and helpless children be
shielded from misery.
Harry has got his eyes pretty wide open, and he knows how to take care
of himself, but he has often said to me that in trying to get a
public-house he met more land-sharks lying in wait for his money than
ever he saw in Ratcliff Highway lying in wait for the sailors. I should
like to show up some of these nice little advertisements of desirable
houses you see in the daily papers, but perhaps it wouldn’t do. I’m
always so afraid of that law which sends you to prison for writing what
is true--the law of libel, I think it is called. But this I will say,
that I hope no young married couple with a bit of money will ever take a
public-house except through a really respectable broker. Don’t be led
away by a beautiful description: and when you call on the broker and he
won’t tell you where it is till you have signed a paper, don’t sign it.
If you do you’ll have to pay for it. The broker and the man who is
selling the property will “cut you up”--that’s what Harry calls
it--between them, and you’ll probably go into the house only to leave it
for the place which is called “_the_ house,” and where there are plenty
of people who have got there through putting all their little fortune
into one of these “first-class houses” as advertised.
We had plenty of them tried on us, and of course we saw plenty of
genuine concerns. Some brokers are very nice, and all is square and
above-board; and they let you know all about the property, and tell you
the truth about it, and don’t make you sign anything before they tell
you where it is to be seen.
At one place which _wasn’t_ a swindle we had an adventure which I can’t
help telling. It was a very pretty place just by a lock on the river,
with gardens and roses, and a place for a pony, and quite a pretty view,
and the rooms very cosy and comfortable, and Harry and I quite fell in
love with it.
“I do believe this place will do, dear,” I said, being quite worn out
with seeing so many.
“Yes,” said Harry, “it’s a perfect little paradise. I think we could be
very happy here, my darling, and the customers seem nice, quiet sort of
people, don’t they?”
We talked like that before we’d made our business known and been shown
over the place.
Presently we went round the outhouses, and as I was going on a little
ahead I went into one before our guide came up. I went right in, and
then I gave a shriek and ran out, feeling as if I should fall to the
ground.
There, lying on the straw, stark and staring, I had seen the dead body
of a man, and, oh, that dreadful face! I shall never forget it while I
live.
“What’s the matter?” cried Harry, running to me and catching me in his
arms just as I was fainting.
“Oh, oh!” I gasped; “there’s a dead man in there.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said the guide. “There’s always something of the
sort in that shed. It’s kept on purpose.”
“What!” I stammered; “always a corpse there?”
“Yes, ma’am. You see, most of the people as throws theirselves into the
river get carried into this lock, so we’re always on the look-out for
’em, and this is the inquest house. Lor’, ma’am, you wouldn’t believe
what a lot of custom they bodies bring to the house! What with friends
coming to identify ’em, and the inquest and the funeral, it’s a very
good thing for the house, I can tell you.”
“Oh, Harry,” I said, as soon as I felt a little better; “I could never
be happy here. Fancy these roses and flowers, and yet always a corpse on
the premises. Let’s go away; we don’t want to see any more.”
But we did get settled at last. We found the place where I’m writing
these Memoirs--the ‘Stretford Arms.’ It is called so after the
Stretfords, who were the great family here, and it’s on what used to be
their property, and nice people they were--some of them--but a queer lot
some of the others, with stories in the family to make the _Police News_
Sunday-school reading to them. The house is very pretty, quite
countryfied, and standing back from the road, with a garden on each side
of it, and lots of trees. And the windows are latticed, and there are
creepers growing all over the walls, and it looks really just like the
pretty house Harry and I saw in the melodrama and fell in love with.
We got it through a respectable broker, who was very useful to us, and
told us everything we had to do, and put us right with the brewer and
the distiller, and managed “the change” for us capitally, and gave us
excellent advice about the house and the class of customers we should
have to deal with, and was very obliging in every way.
He told us that it was just the house to suit us, and we should just
suit the house. He said it was a mistake to suppose that a man who could
manage one house could manage another. “There are men for houses and
houses for men,” he said, “and this was the house for a quiet, energetic
young couple, with taste and pleasing manners, and plenty of domestic
management.”
It was nice of him--wasn’t it?--to say that, and he didn’t charge for it
in the bill. He explained that it was a house which might easily be
worked up into a little country hotel, if it had a good housewife to
look after it; and Harry and I both felt that we really were lucky to
get it, and we made up our minds to try and make it a nice, quiet hotel
for London people, who wanted a few days in the country, to come and
stay at.
I remember hearing my old master, Mr. Saxon, say how nice it was to know
a really pretty country inn where one could have a room and breathe pure
air for a few days, and eat simple food, and get away from the fog and
the smoke, and feel truly rural.
“Harry,” I said, “as soon as we’re straight, and everything’s in order,
I’ll write and let a lot of my old masters and mistresses know where I
am. Perhaps with their recommendation we might get a nice little
connection together for the hotel part. The local people will keep the
bar going all right.”
“Yes,” said Harry, “that wouldn’t be a bad plan; and don’t you think
that literary gentleman you lived with--the one that had the bad
liver--might come, and recommend his friends? I should think it was just
the house for a literary gentleman. Why, I believe I could write poetry
here, myself.”
The dear old goose!--I should like to see his poetry. He’s always saying
that some day _he_ shall write his Memoirs, and then I shall be nowhere.
Oh dear, what fun it would be! But he wouldn’t have patience to go on
long; he hates pens and ink.
But when he said about the literary people I didn’t answer all at once.
I should like Mr. Saxon to come, but I don’t think I should like it to
be a literary house altogether. Literary gentlemen are so queer in their
ways, and they are _not_ so particular as they might be with the ink,
and they do burn the gas so late, and some of them smoke in bed; and
there was another thing--if we had a lot of literary people down, they
might get hold of the characters and the stories of the place, and then
where would my book be?
So I said, “No, dear; I think we’ll ask Mr. Saxon to come, but we won’t
try to get any more writers just yet. What we want are nice, quiet
married couples and respectable elderly gentlemen--people who can
appreciate peace and quietness, and won’t give much trouble.”
Ah me! when I think of the respectable elderly gentleman who _did_ come,
and then remember that I thought elderly respectable gentlemen were
desirable guests, I feel inclined to----
* * * * *
Oh, dear, dear, how unkind of you, baby! You needn’t have woke up just
as I’ve got a few minutes to myself. All right, dear, mamma’s coming.
Bless his big blue eyes! Oh, he _is_ so like Harry!