“Thanks, thanks,” said Scroope, apologizing for the bashful Martha; “but she's in a bit of a quandary just now. My sister wishes to return home, and we cannot remember the name of the hotel.”
Dalton took a hearty fit of laughing at the absurdity of the dilemma.
“'T is well,” said he, “You were n't Irish. By my conscience! they'd call that a bull;” and he shook his sides with merriment. “How did you get here?”
“We walked,” said Martha.
“And which way did you come?”
“Can you remember, Scroope?”
“Yes, I can re-re-member that we crossed a little Plate, with a fountain, and came oyer a wooden bridge, and then down an alley of li-li-linden-trees.”
“To be sure ye did,” broke in Dalton; “and the devil a walk of five minutes ye could take in any direction here without seeing a fountain, a wooden bridge, and a green lane. 'T is the same whichever way you turn, whether you were going to church or the gambling-house. Would you know the name, if you hear it? Was it the Schwan?” Purvis shook his head. “Nor the Black Eagle?—nor the Cour de Londres?—nor the Russie?—nor the Zaringer? Nor, in fact, any of the cognate hotels of Baden. Was n't there a great hall when you entered, with orange-trees all round it, and little couriers, in goold-lace jackets, smoking and drinking beer?” Scroope thought he had seen something of that sort “Of course ye did,” said Dalton, with another burst of laughter. “'Tis the same in every hotel of the town. There 's a clock that never goes, too, and a weather-glass always at 'set fair,' and pictures round the walls of all the wonderful inns in Germany and Switzerland, with coaches-and-four driving in at full gallop, and ladies on the balconies, and saddle-horses waiting, and every diversion in life going on, while, maybe, all the time, the place is dead as Darmstadt.”
Scroope recognized the description perfectly, but could give no clew to its whereabouts.
“Maybe 't is Kaufmayer's. Was it painted yellow outside?”