The tinker looked at me suspiciously, and then at his bundle reposing at his feet. He evidently speculated as to what designs I could have upon it.
"It is a good world, my lad, that is why I sing," says he, "and you'd be singing too, I fancy, if this was your first day out o' jail."
However that might be I am sure we both envied the tinker his frame of mind. Our own was desperate indeed. There was nothing for it but to push on relentlessly, and to hope against hope for some happy chance. We were both utterly wearied and dispirited by this; no houses were near at hand; and the night was closing in. We were consoled in a slight degree with the thought that we were on a high road and that a shelter of one sort or another should not be far to seek. By what means we should be able to avail ourselves of it in our destitute state was another question.
In the very height of our distresses we suddenly came upon a wayside inn, and a scene of a violent and singular character was being enacted on the threshold. Two persons, a man and a woman of mean appearance, had evidently just been ejected from it, since they stood resentfully in the middle of the road with divers bundles containing their goods and chattels scattered around them. The landlord stood at the inn door, shaking his fist and declaiming his great indignation, whilst his wife, standing in a haven of security behind him, was giving rein to her own sentiments with neither hesitation nor uncertainty.
CHAPTER XIX
WE APPEAR IN A NEW CHARACTER
It seemed that the man and woman in the middle of the road were the ostler and chambermaid to the inn, who had just been convicted of a grave misdemeanour. The language in which it was designated and described by the host and hostess, energetic in form and warm in colour as it was, could not, I fear, be reproduced in this chaste narrative. It must suffice to say that the guilty persons had been discharged at a moment's notice. They were now resenting this extreme course from their station in the middle of the road; and whatever were the colours in which their own conduct had been depicted, it is greatly to be doubted, whether they could possibly have been more vivid than those applied to that of their late master and mistress.
To these people in the midst of their altercation came Cynthia and I. Almost at the same instant a similar thought entered the minds of us both. Why should we not apply for these vacated situations? We had had no experience of such duties, it was true. Our lot indeed would be arduous. But we should at least be provided with a shelter for the night; and we could relinquish our unaccustomed tasks the moment we might feel ourselves better served by doing so. A brief whispered conference as we stood apart in the road, and we decided to make application. Never for an instant did the idea cross our minds that such a highly superior ostler and chambermaid could be anything but acceptable to the good people of the inn. Yet when taking our courage in our hands we came up to the door, and I put forward my suggestion with a becoming modesty, the landlord seemed by no means so eager to close with this tempting offer as I had fully expected he would be.
"Have you a character?" says he sharply.
"Oh yes, I think I have a very good character," says I.