The discussion was given up, when it was announced that a room was ready; and Rashe underwent so much in climbing the stairs, that Cilly thought she could not have been worse on the car.
The apartment was not much behind that at the village inn at Hiltonbury. In fact, it had gay curtains and a grand figured blind, but the door at the Charlecote Arms had no such independent habits of opening, the carpet would have been whole, and the chairs would not have creaked beneath Lucy’s grasshopper weight; when down she sat in doleful resignation, having undressed her cousin, sent her chaussure to dry, and dismissed the car, with a sense of bidding farewell to the civilized world, and entering a desert island, devoid of the zest of Robinson Crusoe.
What an endless evening it was, and how the ladies detested each other! There lay Horatia, not hurt enough for alarm, but quite cross enough to silence pity, suffering at every move, and sore at Cilly’s want of compassion; and here sat Lucilla, thoroughly disgusted with her cousin, her situation, and her expedition. Believing the strain a trifle, she not unjustly despised the want of resolution that had shrunk from so expedient an exertion as the journey, and felt injured by the selfish want of consideration that had condemned her to this awkward position in this forlorn little inn, without even the few toilette necessaries that they had with them at Dublin, and with no place to sit in, for the sitting-room below stairs served as a coffee-room, where sundry male tourists were imbibing whiskey, the fumes of which ascended to the young ladies above, long before they could obtain their own meal.
The chops were curiosities; and as to the tea, the grounds, apparently the peat of the valley, filled up nearly an eighth of the cup, causing Lucilla in lugubrious mirth to talk of ‘That lake whose gloomy tea, ne’er saw Hyson nor Bohea,’ when Rashe fretfully retorted, ‘It is very unkind in you to grumble at everything, when you know I can’t help it!’
‘I was not grumbling, I only wanted to enliven you.’
‘Queer enlivenment!’
Nor did Lucilla’s attempts at body curing succeed better. Her rubbing only evoked screeches, and her advice was scornfully rejected. Horatia was a determined homœopath, and sighed for the globules in her wandering box, and as whiskey and tobacco both became increasingly fragrant, averred again and again that nothing should induce her to stay here another night.
Nothing? Lucilla found her in the morning in all the aches and flushes of a feverish cold, her sprain severely painful, her eyes swollen, her throat so sore, that in alarm Cilly besought her to send for advice; but Rashe regarded a murderous
allopathist as near akin to an executioner, and only bewailed the want of her minikin doses.
Giving up the hope of an immediate departure, Lucilla despatched a messenger to Bray, thence to telegraph for the luggage; and the day was spent in fears lest their landlord at Dublin might detain their goods as those of suspicious characters.