“All right, dear; I won’t be one minute.” I must finish this chapter now, or I shall not have another chance. To-morrow we shall be moving up to London, and I shan’t get a minute. Good-bye, dear reader; that impatient husband of mine won’t let me have another minute to myself, and so I can’t write the nice finish that I wanted to. All I have time to say is this. Don’t all of you go and take country hotels or village inns because we have done so well and been so comfortable. For one that succeeds in our business there are half-a-dozen who fail; and I have told you a good deal more about the bright side of our business than about the dark side, because I don’t think people nowadays want to look on the dark side of anything more than they can help. We have been fortunate; but you might get a business that would nearly drive you mad, and ruin you. I told you about a few of the dangers of taking a business in our line in my first chapter, and since I wrote that I have learnt a good deal more. I could tell you some stories of hard-working young couples who have put all their capital, and a lot of their friends’ and relations’ capital, into a licensed house, and come to the most dreadful grief. I know there is an idea that a public-house or an hotel is a royal road to fortune. The money makes itself, and all the landlady has to do is to dress herself up and wear diamond earrings and a big gold chain, while the landlord drives a fast trotter in a gig, and goes to races, and comes home and spends the evening in smoking big cigars and drinking champagne.
That is the idea some people have of being a licensed victualler, and it is a very nice one. Go to the Licensed Victuallers’ Asylum and ask some of the inmates what their idea is, and you will hear a different tale.
We have done well because we have worked hard, and because we walked before we tried to run, and looked after our business ourselves, and didn’t expect it to go up all by itself in a night, like the mushrooms grow. “Luck,” you say. No, that is a word that has no right to come into business at all. I was reading a book of poetry the other day, that one of the gentlemen who stays with us left behind him, and I came on something about Luck which I thought was so good that I copied it out.
It was this——
“A right hand, guided by an earnest soul
With a true instinct, takes the golden prize
From out a thousand blanks. What men call luck
Is the prerogative of valiant souls—
The fealty life pays its rightful kings.”
Of course I don’t mean to say that Harry and I are “rightful kings.” That is the way a poet has to put it to make it poetry, I suppose; but I do mean to say that the first part of the verse is true about us and the way we got on. And so, if we drew a prize where others get blanks, it isn’t fair to put it down to our “luck.”
But, luck or no luck, we did draw a prize, and I hope we are going to draw another. The “Royal Hotel” will never be to me what the ‘Stretford Arms’ was. There won’t be the romance about it, and perhaps it is as well, as a woman with a big business and two little children to look after hasn’t much time for romance. The romance of the ‘Stretford Arms’ was very nice though, for it enabled me to write these Tales of a Village Inn, and to ask the reader to share in the joys and sorrows, the pains and pleasures, and the trials and adventures of Mary Jane Married, and—no, not settled—anything but settled.
If you could see the way this room is blocked up with boxes half packed, and how things are lying about all over the place, you wouldn’t say settled—unsettled, just at present, would be the word. Never mind; I dare say it will come all right, and in a few weeks we shall be settled at the “Royal Hotel,” and I hope it will be a very long time before we make another move.
And now, farewell, dear reader; I must write the word at last. Harry sends you his kind regards, little Harry says “Ta-ta,” and my dear little baby girl puts her little fat hand to her mouth and blows you a kiss, and, with just one little tear of regret in her eye, Mary Jane Beckett, formerly Mary Jane Buffham, and late of the ‘Stretford Arms’ Hotel, wishes you all a long and happy life, and bids you slowly and sadly a long “Farewell.”
* * * * *