Captain Thomas Buckingham was a smallish man of fifty, with a bronzed face, or you might say iron, with respect to its rusty colour, and also it was dark and immobile. But now and then there would come a glimmer and twist in his eyes, sometimes he would start in talking and flow on like a river, calm, sober, and untiring, and yet again he would be silent for hours. Some might have thought him melancholy, for his manner was of the gravest.
We were speaking of hotels, that stormy afternoon when the distant surf was moaning and the wind heaping the snow against the doors, and when the clock had struck, he said slowly:
“I kept a hotel once. It was in '72 or a bit before. It's a good trade.”
And none of us disputed it was a good trade, as keeping a man indoors in stormy weather.
“Was it like Pemberton's?”
“No, not like Pemberton's.”
“Seaside?”
“No, inland a bit.”
“Summer hotel?”
“Aye, summer hotel. Always summer there.”