“Now, sir!” said Essper, wiping the bench with great care, “lie you here and rest yourself. I have known a marshal sleep upon a harder sofa. Breakfast will be ready immediately.”
“If you cannot eat what you have, you may ride where you can find better cheer.”
“What is bread for a traveller’s breakfast? But I daresay my lord will be contented; young men are so easily pleased when there is a pretty girl in the case; you know that, you wench I you do, you little hussy; you are taking advantage of it.”
Something like a smile lit up the face of the sullen woman when she said. “There may be an egg in the house, but I don’t know.”
“But you will soon, you dear creature! What a pretty foot!” bawled Essper after her, as she left the room. “Now confound this hag; if there be not meat about this house may I keep my mouth shut at our next dinner. What’s that in the corner? a boar’s tusk! Ay, ay! a huntsman’s cottage; and when lived a huntsman on black bread before! Oh! bless your bright eyes for these eggs, and this basin of new milk.”
So saying, Essper took them out of her hand and placed them before Vivian.
“I was saying to myself, my pretty girl, when you were out of the room, ‘Essper George, good cheer, say thy prayers, and never despair; come what may, you will fall among friends at last, and how do you know that your dream mayn’t come true after all? Didn’t you dream that you breakfasted in the month of September with a genteel young woman with gold ear-rings? and is not she standing before you now? and did not she do everything in the world to make you comfortable? Did not she give you milk and eggs, and when you complained that you and meat had been but slack friends of late, did not she open her own closet, and give you as fine a piece of hunting beef as was ever set before a Jagd Junker?’”
“I think you will turn me into an innkeeper’s wife at last,” said the dame, her stern features relaxing into a smile; and while she spoke she advanced to the great closet, Essper George following her, walking on his toes, lolling out his enormous tongue, and stroking his mock paunch. As she opened it he jumped upon a chair and had examined every shelf in less time than a pistol could flush. “White bread! fit for a countess; salt! worthy of Poland; boar’s head!! no better at Troyes; and hunting beef!!! my dream is true!” and he bore in triumph to Vivian, who was nearly asleep, the ample round of salt and pickled beef well stuffed with all kinds of savoury herbs.
It was nearly an hour before noon ere the travellers had remounted. Their road again entered the forest which they had been skirting for the last two days. The huntsmen were abroad; and the fine weather, his good meal and seasonable rest, and the inspiriting sounds of the bugle made Vivian feel recovered from his late fatigues.
“That must be a true-hearted huntsman, Essper, by the sound of his bugle. I never heard one played with more spirit. Hark! how fine it dies away hi the wood; fainter and fainter, yet how clear! It must be now half a mile distant.”