Riding into the inn-yard, I shouted to the host to get me his best dinner, and, while it was preparing, I overlooked the grooming and baiting of Sultan. I left him comfortable and content, and strolled indoors to look after my own needs.
Though on the London road, and only fifteen miles from the scene of action, the inn was quiet. I learned from the host that a courier had galloped through an hour before, spurring southwards, and cried out from the saddle that the bare-legs were only five miles from Derby when he left. Earlier in the day a cart had driven through loaded up with the gowns of the town dignitaries, "going to Leicester to be done up," explained the host, delighted with his own shrewdness.
A hunger-bitten traveller with a good dinner in front of him commonly pays no attention for the time being to anything else. I found two men in the guest-room, and, after a civil greeting, which made one of them open his eyes and mouth very uncivilly, I sat down to eat, very content with the fare set before me.
As my hunger steadily abated before a steady attack on a cold roast sirloin of most commendable quality, I began to take more interest in the two men. In fact, more interest in them was forced on me by the beginnings of a pretty quarrel between them, and by the time I had got to the cheese, they, utterly regardless of my presence, were at it hammer and tongs. The row was about a horse-deal lately passed between them, and there are few things men can quarrel about more easily or more vigorously. The yokel who had gaped at me, had been cheated by his companion, and was accordingly resentful.
Two men more at odds in outward appearance could not easily have been found. The gaper was plain country, a big, bulky man, with a paunch that, as he sat, sagged nearly to his knees, a triple chin, and a nose with a knobly end, in shape and colour like an overripe strawberry. His companion was a little fellow, lean and sharp-cut, with a head like a ferret's. We country-siders know your Londoner. Many an hour I had sat under the clump of elms at the lane-end and watched the travellers. Hence, doubtless, my taste in fashionable head-gear, like this of mine, lately belonging to Swift Nicks, now disposed carefully on the table at my side. I would have wagered it against Joe Braggs' frowsy old milking-cap that the little man was a Londoner.
Little as he was, his cold, calculating anger overbore his antagonist, who was no great hand at stating his case, good as it was.
"The landlord knows me and knows the gelding," said the little man. "You know less about horses than a Mile End tapster. Fetch him in, and let him decide. I suppose you rode him!"
"What a God's name, d'ye think I bought him for, Mr. Wicks? To look at?"
"By the look of you I should think you bought him as a present for a baby. Sixteen stone six if you're an ounce, and riding a two-year-old! Damme, no wonder he throws out curbs! Fetch the landlord, I tell ye!"
Out burst the fat man in a great fury, and in a minute or two came back with the landlord and an ostler. Then the wrangle became hotter and more amusing than ever.