The poor old man looked bored to death.
"Thirty—forty year," he said. "I can't call to mind exactly; my memory hain't what it were."
Mr. Ambrose wished him good-day, and without tipping him—he did not want to fix himself in the old man's feeble memory—and repaired to the inn.
He called for a glass of ale, which he took care not to drink, and asked for a paper.
The landlord brought him a local one.
"Could I see a London one?" asked Mr. Ambrose.
The landlord shook his head.
"All the news as we care about, such as the state of the crops, and the prices at Coving Garden Market, is in that there paper; we don't trouble about a Lunnon one," he said.
Mr. Ambrose nodded and smiled, paid for his ale, and went back to London.
"Sefton is the place," he said. "It is so out of the world that they never see a London newspaper; so asleep that the noise of the great world rushing onward never wakes it, and the parson and clerk are faster asleep than anything else in it!"