The new people who are coming in are luckier than we were, for they will find a good business ready made for them. All they have to do is to keep everything up to the mark, and I think they will. I have seen them several times, and I like them very much. Their name is Eager. Mr. Eager is a man of about thirty-five, tall and dark, and I think rather handsome, and his wife is a pretty little woman of about five-and-twenty. They have both been in the business before, her papa having been an hotel-proprietor in the North of England, and he having been manager to a small hotel at the seaside, where the proprietor was his uncle.
They are very nice, quiet, straightforward people, and our business with them has been done very pleasantly indeed. They are what we were when we took the ‘Stretford Arms’—a newly-married couple—and they seem most affectionate and amiable.
Mrs. Eager and I had a quiet cup of tea together while the gentlemen were talking business over a cigar and a glass of whiskey-and-water, and she told me all about their meeting, and falling in love, and it wasn’t at all a bad story.
It seems that Mrs. Eager, who was a Miss Braham, was staying with her papa, who was not very well, at the seaside place where Mr. Eager’s hotel was. Her papa was a good swimmer, and used to bathe early in the morning from the beach. One morning he was swimming when suddenly he felt very bad, and found he was losing strength, and being carried too far from shore in a rough sea. Another gentleman who was swimming, saw what was the matter, and swam towards him, and managed to help him, and keep him up and shout till a man on the beach saw them, and jumped into a boat and rowed out to them, and rescued them both. The old gentleman (he wasn’t very old) was very grateful, and said the young fellow, who was Mr. Eager, had saved his life—and that was quite true, for, but for him, he would have been drowned, as his strength was fast deserting him.
That began the acquaintance, and Mr. Eager was invited to come and stay at Mr. Braham’s hotel up north, and he did; and then the daughter, as well as the papa, took a great liking to him, and they were very soon engaged to be married. When the father found how the land lay he was very pleased, and he said he would start the young couple in a nice little hotel of their own as soon as they were married, and that is how they came to take the ‘Stretford Arms’ of us.
I hope they will be as happy in it as we have been. I shall often sit and think of an evening, when I am at the “Royal Hotel” of the little ‘Stretford Arms,’ and, in fancy, I shall see the dear old bar-parlour and the smoke-room, and the customers sitting there smoking their evening pipes, when I am far away.
“What is it? Come in. The master wants me? All right; say I’m coming directly.” I must finish. I have promised Harry that I won’t start any more “Memoirs” in the new house, as he says, when I have a few minutes to spare, he wants to enjoy the pleasure of my society; and so I am going to get every bit of this book written and finished to-night, and then good-bye to pens and ink, and all the pleasure and all the pains of authorship.
Looking back on all that has happened since I left service, and married Harry, and went into this line of business, I feel that I have every reason to be grateful. We have had good luck, good health, and a good time, and not one really great or serious trouble. If we go on as we have begun, perhaps before we are too old to enjoy it we shall have made enough money to retire and live in a pretty little house, and devote ourselves to each other and our children. That is my idea of happiness.
When that time comes I may perhaps be tempted to write some more of my experiences. I dare say I shall have had plenty by then. But till that time does come I have made up my mind to think about no books but the books of the “Royal Hotel,” and to study no characters but the characters of my servants. And so, gentle reader, though it makes me feel sad to say the words, I have at last to wish you good-bye—a long, long good-bye. I hope you won’t forget me altogether, but that sometimes, when you are reading other people’s stories, you will say to yourself, “I wonder how Mary Jane is getting on;” and if any of you are ever near the Midland town we are going to make our new home in, I hope you will come and stay at the “Royal Hotel,” proprietor Harry Beckett, late of the ‘Stretford Arms.’ You may be sure that we shall make you as comfortable as possible, and I think from what you know of my husband and myself you will be able to rely upon finding a good kitchen and a good cellar, and comfort, cleanliness, and attention, combined with moderate charges.
Please don’t think that I say this by way of advertisement. I should be very sorry to make my book an advertisement for my business, as I don’t believe in that sort of thing. I have written the “Memoirs” of our village hotel as I wrote the “Memoirs” of myself in service, because I thought I had something to write about that would be interesting to the people who read books. As a landlady, I have had as many opportunities of observing people and hearing their stories as I had when a servant—more varied opportunities as the landlady than as the servant. I hope that now, as in the former “Memoirs,” I have written nothing which can offend or be considered a breach of confidence. I have tried in my humble way to describe everything I have seen and heard faithfully, and to give a correct description of all that happened in our hotel.