I repeated my question in Welsh.
“Two miles,” said she.
“Still two miles to Holyhead by the road,” thought I. “Nos da,” said I to the woman and sped along. At length I saw water on my right, seemingly a kind of bay, and presently a melancholy ship. I doubled my pace, which was before tolerably quick, and soon saw a noble-looking edifice on my left, brilliantly lighted up. “What a capital inn that would make,” said I, looking at it wistfully, as I passed it. Presently I found myself in the midst of a poor, dull, ill-lighted town.
“Where is the inn?” said I to a man.
“The inn, sir; you have passed it. The inn is yonder,” he continued, pointing towards the noble-looking edifice.
“What, is that the inn?” said I.
“Yes, sir, the railroad hotel—and a first-rate hotel it is.”
“And are there no other inns?”
“Yes, but they are all poor places. No gent puts up at them—all the gents by the railroad put up at the railroad hotel.”
What was I to do? after turning up my nose at the railroad, was I to put up at its hotel? Surely to do so would be hardly acting with consistency. “Ought I not rather to go to some public-house, frequented by captains of fishing smacks, and be put in a bed a foot too short for me,” said I, as I reflected on my last night’s couch at Mr Pritchard’s. “No, that won’t do—I shall go to the hotel, I have money in my pocket, and a person with money in his pocket has surely a right to be inconsistent if he pleases.”