Chapter 10 - Page 2

serious consideration. Indeed, if he had been distracted in the first instance by questionings and orders, it would have taken him at the least a fortnight to have noted what is here set down; but it happened that the gentleman, being struck with the old house, or with the plump pigeons which were skimming and curtseying about it, or with the tall maypole, on the top of which a weathercock, which had been out of order for fifteen years, performed a perpetual walk to the music of its own creaking, sat for some little time looking round in silence. Hence John, standing with his hand upon the horsea€™s bridle, and his great eyes on the rider, and with nothing passing to divert his thoughts, had really got some of these little circumstances into his brain by the time he was called upon to speak.

a€˜A quaint place this,a€™ said the gentlemana€"and his voice was as rich as his dress. a€˜Are you the landlord?a€™

a€˜At your service, sir,a€™ replied John Willet.

a€˜You can give my horse good stabling, can you, and me an early dinner (I am not particular what, so that it be cleanly served), and a decent room of which there seems to be no lack in this great mansion,a€™ said the stranger, again running his eyes over the exterior.

a€˜You can have, sir,a€™ returned John with a readiness quite surprising, a€˜anything you please.a€™

a€˜Ita€™s well I am easily satisfied,a€™ returned the other with a smile, a€˜or that might prove a hardy pledge, my friend.a€™ And saying so, he dismounted, with the aid of the block before the door, in a twinkling.

a€˜Halloa there! Hugh!a€™ roared John. a€˜I ask your pardon, sir, for keeping you standing in the porch; but my son has gone to town on business, and the boy being, as I may say, of a kind of use to me, Ia€™m rather put out when hea€™s away. Hugh!a€"a dreadful idle vagrant fellow, sir, half a gipsy, as I thinka€"always sleeping in the sun in summer, and in the straw in winter time, sira€"Hugh! Dear Lord, to keep a gentleman a waiting here through him!a€"Hugh! I wish that chap was dead, I do indeed.a€™

a€˜Possibly he is,a€™ returned the other. a€˜I should think if he were living, he would have heard you by this time.a€™

a€˜In his fits of laziness, he sleeps so desperate hard,a€™ said the distracted host, a€™that if you were to fire off cannon-balls into his ears, it wouldna€™t wake him, sir.a€™

The guest made no remark upon this novel cure for drowsiness, and recipe for making people lively, but, with his hands clasped behind him, stood in the