“A truce to your jokes, good Essper; I really am very ill. A year ago I could have laughed at our misfortunes, but now it is very different; and, by heavens, I must have breakfast! so stir, exert yourself, and, although I die for it, let us canter up to the smoke.”
“No, dear master, I will ride on before. Do you follow gently, and if there be a pigeon in the pot in all Germany. I swear by the patron saint of every village for fifty miles round, provided they be not heretics, that you shall taste of its breast-bone this morning.”
The smoke did issue from a chimney, but the door of the cottage was shut.
“Hilloa, within!” shouted Essper; “who shuts the sun out on a September morning?”
The door was at length slowly opened, and a most ill-favoured and inhospitable-looking dame demanded, in a sullen voice, “What’s your will?”
“You pretty creature!” said Essper, who was still a little tipsy.
The door would have been shut in his face had not he darted into the house before the woman was aware.
“Truly, a neat and pleasant dwelling! and you would have no objection, I guess, to give a handsome young gentleman some little sop of something just to remind him, you know, that it isn’t dinner-time.”
“We give no sops here: what do you take us for? and so, my handsome young gentleman, be off, or I shall call the good man.”
“Why, I am not the handsome young gentleman; that is my master! who, if he were not half-starved to death, would fall in love with you at first sight.”