“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.”
So I turned back and entered the railway hotel with lofty port and with sounding step, for I had twelve sovereigns in my pocket, besides a half one, and some loose silver, and feared not to encounter the gaze of any waiter or landlord in the land. “Send boots!” I roared to the waiter, as I flung myself down in an arm-chair in a magnificent coffee-room. “What the deuce are you staring at? send boots, can’t you, and ask what I can have for dinner.”
“Yes, sir,” said the waiter, and with a low bow departed.