It wasn’t his not paying his bill so much that we minded as the scandal!
Harry said, “Well, we wanted to get something about our house in the papers, and, by Jove, missus, we’ve got it! It’s all over the county now. I shouldn’t wonder if our hotel wasn’t known as ‘The Burglar’s Arms.’”
“Oh, Harry,” I said, “don’t say that—it’s awful. If we got a name like that no respectable person would pass a night here.” I began to think, when Harry said that, about an inn I’d seen on the stage, where awful things are done—a murder, I think; by two awful villains who stayed there, though they made you laugh. Their names were Mr. Macaire and Mr. Strop, I think; but how the landlord could have taken them in dressed as they were, and putting bread and cheese and onions in their hats, and stuffing their umbrellas with meat and vegetables, I couldn’t understand. You could see they were bad characters, but no one would ever have suspected that silver-haired, golden-spectacled old gentleman, who really looked just what he said he was—a London physician.
I must confess that for a good many nights after the awful discovery I didn’t feel very comfortable. It made me nervous to think that we should never know who was sleeping under our roof. I’m sure I should never have suspected that nice amiable old gentleman of being a burglar.
We got over it after a bit, and when no trace was found of the burglar, and the excitement was over, I didn’t think so much about it. All that was found out was that the man in the dog-cart who nearly drove over the miller was an accomplice. They traced the wheels away from the Hall, and the detective said the man in the dog-cart had waited for the physician and driven him off with the “swag.” (That’s what the detective called it.)
A few days after that another old gentleman came, and wanted a room, but he’d only got a black bag, and I was so nervous that I told him we were full, and he went back to the station, and went on somewhere else.
Of course it was a stupid thing to do, but my nerves were bad, and being an old gentleman and having no luggage it gave me a turn, and I sent him away on the spur of the moment.
Afterwards we found out he was a big solicitor in London, and very savage with myself I was for my foolishness.
Soon after that two more customers came, and I was not a bit frightened of them, for they were just the sort of people we wanted. It must have been a little more than a fortnight after the burglary that the station fly brought us a young lady and gentleman with some lovely luggage—honeymoon luggage I saw it was at once by the new dress trunks, and the new dressing-bags, and I knew it was a honeymoon by the way the young gentleman helped the young lady out of the fly and the bashful way he came in and said, “Can I have apartments here for myself and my wife?”
“Certainly, sir,” I said; “I will show you the apartments we have vacant.”