“Very few, My Lord,” answered the host glibly, “the very best chamber on the first floor with the sitting-room has been kept for Your Lordship,” applying hand to latch of coach-door, the which, however, is still firmly held by its occupant.
“Their names?” asks the little gentleman, while at the fleck of one of the postilion’s lashes his wheelers begin to prance and advance so far into the yard as that their racket brings Peggy a second time to her narrow pane, a-squinting up her eyes to see who this may be. For, in the midst of her distress, as befalls often enough to all of us, she takes unconscious note of minor happenings, the which, those who study such matters affirm to be proof of the two-sided condition of men’s minds.
“Your guests’ names?” reiterates the small gentleman, as, followed by the cortège of dame, maid, man, dog, cat, and tame magpie, the coach comes to a halt within excellent range of Her Ladyship’s coign of vantage and earshot. “I must know them before I alight.”
“Well, My Lord, there’s Mr. Bigge, the Curate from Risley Commons, as stops over here on his way to Finchley every week; Mr. Blunt, the traveling tailor; His Grace the Duke of Courtleigh’s own man, off on his holiday; Mr. Townes and his new married wife a-goin’ to settle in the lodge at the Manor-house; a young spark drabbled with mud and havin’ no boxes and no servants, what arrived by means of a market cart just anon, and Sir Percy de Bohun, a fine gentleman what’s just ridden in the yard before Your Lordship’s coach, but”—
“Who?” The little gentleman turned green in his pallor, and shot back in his cushions with a gasp.
“Not much of any account, My Lord, I’m thinking, since Jenny here tells me he sups at the ordinary; of course Your Lordship’ll be served in your own sitting-room and dame and myself to humbly wait upon you.”
“Hold your tongue!” says the little man, gathering his scattered wits and pausing to think, while his steeds paw noisily on the cobble pavement.
Peggy, at the pane, almost laughs as she regards the shrinking weazened visage.
“Sir Robert McTart!” she says to herself, shaking her head at the little vixen. “’Tis indeed a merry fate that puts me and Percy and you all under one roof this night. That is, if his presence don’t fright you into a gallop!”
Sir Percy himself, also for a second standing moodily at his casement, could and did behold thence Sir Robin’s restive and hungry leaders, and had a passing wonder as to what the devil brought any gentleman to stop at such an inn, save as himself, by the misfortune of a nail in his animal’s foot.