“Only! I’d like to know what you’d make it, man. That’s the price of a right good meal up in town, and not served on a coarse tablecloth, nor over a sanded floor; and what’s this 1s. 10d.? What’s that?”
“Ale, Sir. Your servant drank it very freely.”
“If it only disagreed with him as it did with me, I’ll make no objection to his excess. Are these gentlemen waiting to speak to me, for I don’t think I have the honour—”
“Yes, Sir,” said a short, apoplectic-looking man, with a bald head; “we are strangers—strangers casually thrown into acquaintance at this hotel. We have come here from motives of pleasure, or health, or indolence—-one common object having its attraction for us all—the far-famed cottage of Dinasllyn. We have learned, however, to our infinite disappointment, that, by a whim, a mere caprice—for it is impossible it could be more—of the persons’ who are the present occupants, the travellers, the tourists I will call them, ate to be excluded in future, and all access refused to a spot which has its claims on the sympathies not alone of the Englishman, for I see at my side a learned professor from Jena, and a distinguished citizen of New York——”
“Kansas, stranger, Little Rock,” said the Yankee, interrupting, and then advancing to the front. “Here’s how it is, Sir. Your friends up yonder ain’t content to have God’s gifts all their own, but they won’t even let a man look at them. That ain’t nature, and it ain’t sense. We have drawn up our notions in a brief message. Are you a mindin’ of me, stranger?”
This question was not completely uncalled for, since for some few seconds Mr. M’Kinlay had turned to the landlord, and was occupied in the payment of his bill.
“Seventeen shillings and fourpence, leaving eightpence for Thomas, Mr. Pugh; and remember that your driver is now fully paid, unless I should stay, to dinner.”
“Are you a mindin’ of me, Sir?” said the Yankee, with an energy that actually made the other start, and sent a deeper crimson to his cheeks.