After we had had a nice long honeymoon, Harry began to think it was time we looked out for something; so he said, “Now, little woman, this is all very nice and lazy and lovely, but we must begin to think about the future. The sooner we look for a place the better.”
So every day we read the advertisements in the papers of public-houses and inns and hotels in the country which were for sale.
Whenever we saw “nice home,” or “lovely garden,” or “comfortable home just suited to a young married couple,” we wrote at once for full particulars. When we wrote to the agents about the best ones, I found that it was very like the paragon servants advertised—they had just been disposed of, but the agent had several others equally nice on hand if we would call.
It was very annoying to find all the “lovely gardens” and “charming homes,” which were so cheap, just gone, and to get instead of them particulars of a horrid place at the corner of a dirty lane, with only a back yard to it, or something of that sort.
We went to see some of the places the agents or brokers sent us, and they were very much nicer in the advertisements than they were in themselves.
One house we went to look at we thought would do, though the situation seemed lonely. We wrote we would come to see it on a certain day, and when we got there, certainly there was no mistake about its doing a good trade. They asked a lot of money for it, but the bar was full, and in the coffee-room were men who looked like farmers having dinner and ordering wine, and smoking fourpenny cigars quite fast. And while we were having dinner with the landlord in his room, the servant kept coming in and saying, “Gentleman wants a room, sir,” till presently all the rooms were gone, and people had to be turned away.
“It’s like that now nearly always,” said the landlord. “If it wasn’t that I must go out to Australia, to my brother, who is dying, and going to leave me a fortune made at the diggings, I wouldn’t part with the house for anything.”
“Where do the people all come from?” said Harry. “The station’s two miles off.”
“Oh,” said the landlord, “there’s something against the Railway Hotel—it’s haunted, I believe, and this last month everybody comes on here. If you like to start the fly business as well, you’ll make a lot of money at that. Flys to meet the trains would fill you up every day.”
We went away from the house quite convinced that it was a great bargain, and Harry said he thought we might as well settle with the agents, for we couldn’t do better.