O, baby, whatever have you been doing? Nurse, look at the child’s face! What does it mean? Been at the coal-scuttle! Why, I declare he’s sucking a piece of coal now! O, oo dirty, dirty boy—and oo nice tlene pinny only just put on! Go and wash him, nurse, for goodness’ sake, before his father sees him, or I sha’n’t hear the last of it for a week.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE SILENT POOL.
One of the things that used to make me the most nervous when we first took to hotel-keeping was not knowing what sort of people you’d got sleeping under your roof. Anybody that’s got a portmanteau can come and stay at an hotel or an inn, and how are you to know who and what they are? They may be murderers, hiding from justice; they may be thieves or burglars; and they may be very respectable people; but, unless they’re old customers, you must take them on trust. It’s not a bit of good saying you can judge by appearances, because you can’t. The most gentlemanly and good-natured-looking man that ever stopped at our house gave us a cheque for his bill, and the cheque was never paid, and turned out to be one he’d helped himself to out of somebody else’s cheque-book; and, worse than that, when he left he took a good deal more away in his portmanteau than he brought with him, and one thing was a beautiful new suit belonging to a young gentleman staying in the house, which we had to make good. It worried me terribly when we found out that we’d had a regular hotel thief stopping with us, I can tell you; and, after we found it out, I was all of a tremble for days, expecting every minute something more to be found missing.
Fortunately, the suit, and a scarf-pin of Harry’s, and a silver-mounted walking-stick were all he went off with, so far as we ever discovered. Perhaps he didn’t have a chance of getting anything else, and was satisfied with what he did get, and letting us in for £7 15s. He wanted to draw the cheque for ten pounds and have the change, I remember; but I said “No” to that, and very glad I was afterwards that I did. It was a lesson to us, not getting the cheque paid. And after that we had a notice printed across all our billheads, “No cheques taken,” like most hotel-keepers do now. Some of them have a very nice collection of unpaid cheques, which they keep as curiosities.
Having been “done,” as Harry calls it, once or twice, made us more careful, and so young fellows without much luggage that we didn’t know anything about, when they began to live extravagantly, having champagne, and all that sort of thing, and staying for more than a day, we generally kept an eye on.
When they were out, we used to go up to their rooms and just have a look round and see if they’d got much clothes with them, because the portmanteau is nothing to go by. It may be stuffed full of old books and newspapers.
It was just while we were extra suspicious through having been swindled and robbed by the man I’ve just told you about, that two gentlemen with two small portmanteaus came in one evening by the last train, and wanted two bedrooms and a sitting-room.
They were about thirty-five years old, I should say, by the look of them. One was tall and thin, and the other was short and stout. They certainly looked respectable, and were well dressed; but they talked in rather a curious way to each other, using words that neither Harry nor I could understand, and that made us a little suspicious, and so we kept a sort of watch on them, and kept our ears open, too, as, of course, we had a right to do, seeing we had not only the reputation of the house to look after, but also the comfort and the property of the other customers.
I showed them their bedrooms, and, as it was late, I said, “I suppose, gentlemen, you won’t want a fire lighted in the sitting-room this evening?”
What made me say that was, it was past eleven, and, of course, I expected they would take their candles and go to bed.