“Travelling on business, or for pleasure?”
“Pleasure.”
“A delightful season this, to travel in, sir; neither too warm, nor too cold. And the country never looks so rich and beautiful as in its autumn foliage.”
“True,” answered the stranger, briefly, and then he added, “I didn’t ask you to come here to catechize me, my good friend; but to submit to be catechized yourself, and to amuse me with the gossip of the neighborhood.”
Again nothing but the consciousness of a heavy fee would have induced the host of the “Antlers” to put up with this traveller’s “nonsense,” as he termed his general assumption of superiority.
“What would you like to hear about, then, sir?” growled the landlord.
“First, what important families have you in this part of the country?”
“Well, sir, the most principlest is the Bernerses of Black Hall, which have returned from their bridal tour about a month ago and taken up their abode there in the old ancestral home.”
“The Berners! Who are they?” inquired the traveller, carelessly trifling with the wing of a pheasant.
“You must be a stranger indeed, sir, not to know the Bernerses of Black Hall,” said the landlord, with an expression of strong disapprobation.