Now as a great many of these attendances had been really to shoot game and dine on rabbits at Bassett's expense, he thought it hard the conversation should be charged and the rabbits not.
Disgusted with his defeat, and resolved to evade this bill, he discharged his servant, and put a retired soldier into his house, armed him with a blunderbuss, and ordered him to keep all doors closed, and present the weapon aforesaid at all rate collectors, tax collectors, debt collectors, and applicants for money to build churches or convert the heathen; but not to fire at anybody except his friend Wheeler, nor at him unless he should try to shove a writ in at some chink of the building.
This done, he went on his travels, third-class, with his eyes always open, and his heart full of bitterness.
Nothing happened to Richard Bassett on his travels that I need relate until one evening when he alighted at a small commercial inn in the city of York, and there met a person whose influence on the events I am about to relate seems at this moment incredible to me, though it is simple fact.
He found the commercial room empty, and rang the bell. In came the waiter, a strapping girl, with coal-black eyes and brows to match, and a brown skin, but glowing cheeks.
They both started at sight of each other. It was Polly Somerset.
“Why, Polly! How d'ye do? How do you come here?”
“It's along of you I'm here, young man,” said Polly, and began to whimper. She told him her sister had found out from the page she had been colloguing with him, and had never treated her like a sister after that. “And when she married a gentleman she wouldn't have me aside her for all I could say, but she did pack me off into service, and here I be.”
The girl was handsome, and had a liking for him. Bassett was idle, and time hung heavy on his hands: he stayed at the inn a fortnight, more for Polly's company than anything: and at last offered to put her into a vacant cottage on his own little estate of Highmore. But the girl was shrewd, and had seen a great deal of life this last three years; she liked Richard in her way, but she saw he was all self, and she would not trust him. “Nay,” said she, “I'll not break with Rhoda for any young man in Britain. If I leave service she will never own me at all: she is as hard as iron.”
“Well, but you might come and take service near me, and then we could often get a word together.”