The day, which had opened blue and gold, with a high wind and clear sunshine, began to gather threatening clouds by the time the posting station was reached; and the “Dover High-Flyer” plunged away again into a snow squall with all the speed of its fresh horses.
“We are like to have a seasonable Christmas,” quoth Sir Everard, and was pleased to note that, while the rest of the company grumbled and complained, the fine specimen of young womanhood opposite to him produced a warm shawl from a bundle, tucked it round her knees, and offered him the other end, declaring, with a smile, that she was as warm as a toast, and that she did love a white Christmas.
They all dined at Rochester, and had hot punch, of which Miss Pounce partook with enthusiasm, but in very discreet measure.
Conversation flagged on this, their last, stage. The snoring of the foreign pair who, having tied their heads up in terrible coloured handkerchiefs, leant against each other and gave themselves up to repose with much the same animal abandonment as that with which they had gobbled the beef-steak pie and gulped the hot rum of the “Bull Inn” at Rochester; the sighing fidgets of the farmer’s wife, and the grunts of her neighbour, the Dover tradesman, each time they jarred him from a fitful somnolence, alone broke the inner silence. Without, the multiple rhythm of the horses hoofs and the varying answer of the road to the wheels—now the scrunch of cobble stones, now the slushy whisper of the snow-filled rut, now the whirring ring of a well-metalled stretch—formed a monotonous whole which lulled to silence those who could not sleep.
Sir Everard saw, by the shifting flicker of the lamps, how pensiveness gathered on the bright face opposite him. Once or twice the girl raised a finger to the corner of her eyelid as if to press back a rising tear; sighs lifted her bosom.
“Ah!” thought the old philosopher, “the goddess of modes is not so fancy free as I had thought. Here, truly, are all the signs of a gentle love tale. Perhaps the young man in the counting-house, or some sprightly haberdasher, who sees Miss pass to her work, and would fain capture for his own counter a face so fair and charming.”
Sir Everard felt very old and stiff by the time Canterbury was reached, and half regretted his suggestion to his travelling companion, to continue their comradeship at supper. He thought it might have better become his years and aching bones to retire into a feather bed with a basin of gruel. Far indeed was he from guessing the singular emotions into which his old age was destined to be plunged that evening.
A fine room with a four-poster, no less indeed than the chamber which went by the name of “Great Queen Anne,” this was what the landlord proposed to allot to Sir Everard. A chimney you couldn’t beat in the kingdom for drawing, mine host averred, and a fire there this minute; agreeable to Sir Everard’s obliging communication. And what could he do for Miss?
Sir Everard was a little shocked to hear Miss Pounce enter upon a brisk bargain for an attic, and hesitatingly began a courteous offer of his own apartment, when she interrupted him with the valiant good sense which he had already had cause to admire in her.