Good gracious me! Isn’t supper ready? Hasn’t cook got a fit? Doesn’t Harry want the key of the cash-box? Has nothing gone wrong downstairs or upstairs? Wonders will never cease! I’ve actually been able to finish my “Memoir” of Mr. Lampost and Mr. Waterbutt, and their visit to the ‘Stretford Arms,’ without anybody knocking at the door, and saying, “Please, ma’am, you’re wanted.” Thank goodness!
CHAPTER XVII.
THE OWEN WALESES.
They had the sitting-rooms, No. 6 and No. 7.
“Sixes and Sevens” we called them, and certainly that’s what they were always at. They stayed three weeks, while their house in London was being painted and done up inside and out; and if they had stayed much longer, I think mad I should have gone. When they came I had picked up my strength again wonderfully, and was quite well; but when they went away I was reduced to such a state of nervousness that if a door banged I jumped out of my chair and burst into a perspiration.
One day we had a letter from a lady in London, asking if we had two sitting-rooms and four bedrooms to spare, and giving a list of the family she wanted to bring with her, if we could accommodate them for a fortnight. Mrs. Owen Wales was the name on the lady’s card, and it was a very good address. So we wrote back to say that we had the bedrooms to spare, and also two nice sitting-rooms—No. 6 and No. 7. She had asked us to give her an idea of our terms for such a party for three weeks; but Harry said it was no good making a reduction, as large families were sometimes more trouble than small ones, and our terms were quite moderate enough. So I wrote a nice polite letter, and said what our regular charges were, and that as we had only limited accommodation, and were generally full, we couldn’t make any reduction, but they might rely upon every attention being paid to their comfort.
One or two letters passed before the thing was settled, and then one day we had a telegram ordering fires to be lighted in both sitting-rooms and dinner to be ready at 6.30 for six people, in the largest sitting-room.
They arrived about half-past five—Mr. and Mrs. Owen Wales and two young gentlemen and two young ladies and a maidservant.
Mr. Owen Wales was a very short and very stout gentleman of about fifty-five, with the reddest hair and whiskers I ever saw in my life. Mrs. Owen Wales was about fifty, I should say, but she was six feet, if she was an inch, and a fine women in every way; in fact, I may say a magnificent woman. The two sons, Mr. Robert and Mr. David, were fine, tall young men, taking after the mother. One was twenty-two and the other nineteen, and the daughters, Miss Rhoda and Miss Maggie, were both tall, too, and neither of them, I should say, would see twenty again. Pryce, the lady’s-maid, was the queerest lady’s-maid I ever saw in my life. She said she was forty to one of our girls, who asked the question delicately; but she was sixty if she was a day. She was one of those hard-faced, straight-up-and-down, hawk-eyed, eagle-nosed old women that never laugh and never smile, and seem to have been turned out of a mould hard set, and never to have melted.
I soon saw what I had to deal with in Mrs. Pryce (she was a Miss, but was always called Mrs. by her own request,) directly she got out of the fly, that came on first with the luggage.
She began to order me about, if you please, before she had been inside the door a second, and to give me directions what was to be done, as if I had never had a respectable person stay at my hotel before.