It is true she occupied her present post because nobody else would employ her as a waitress.
As a rule, hotel-keepers and publicans like smart-looking girls to serve in that capacity.
The landlord was a big strapping fellow, who had passed some months of his earlier days in a metropolitan prison for sundry acts of petty knavery, but the discipline of the gaol did not suit him, and he therefore made up his mind to “pull himself short up,” as he playfully explained it.
He married, and took the “Travellers’ Rest,” which he obtained for a “mere song.”
He was as strong as a giant, and stood over six feet in height, with strong sinewy limbs.
No one would think of attacking him single-handed, and he was therefore well adapted by nature to be the chief of a vagrants’ lodging-house, for he was more than a match for the most desperate or daring mendicant.
His wife was altogether of a different mould. She had once been handsome, but coarse language, coarse associates, combined with a predilection for strong drinks, had converted her into a faded and fallen beauty—a mere shadow of her former self.
When the landlord had seen his customers supplied with the requisite quantity of beer, he turned to a thickset, wild, savage-looking man who had a small bull-dog at his feet, and who travelled with another man much like himself.
The wild, savage-looking man had jet black hair, an old brown leather belt, and a little sack thrown across his shoulder.
He was a “prig,” and belonged to that class of vagrants who are adepts in drawing a purse, watch, or pocket-book from persons in crowded places. Races, fairs, and prize fights were the most favourite places with him.