The vicar leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, quoting softly, as if to himself: "These are all at your choice; and life is short." But the stranger did not hear him, for he found himself amidst a company "wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty, of every place and time."
VIII
A COTSWOLD BARMAID
It seemed an odd name for an elderly woman, even when, as in this case, she happened to be a barmaid: but some one with an eye for likenesses christened her "Bobby" because of a really striking resemblance to the statesman at that time familiarly known as "Bobby Lowe." Anyway the name expressed her, and Bobby she remained to the end. Let it not be imagined that disrespect was so much as suggested by the title: she was the best respected woman in our town, and certainly one of the most influential.
There was a college, of a sort, near the town where Bobby lived, and generations of students and the whole hunting youth of the countryside passed through her kind hands, and every man amongst them will acknowledge that he was the better for having known Bobby.
It is to be supposed that at one time she was slim, instead of round-about, that her abundant white hair was once brown or golden, that she had a story of her own apart from the "Moonstone" and her "boys"; but we took her for granted none the less thankfully that we were apt to forget how unique she was, till we were far from Bobby and the Moonstone Bar.
Youthful new-comers were her especial care. She not infrequently confiscated their money if she thought they were going to "play the giddy," only restoring it when she considered they were capable of using it with some discretion. And how carefully she looked after the digestions of such as were inexperienced in the matter of drinks! "What?" she would exclaim, "green chartreuse, sir, and you just bin 'avin' beer! You really mustn't, sir, you'd be that bad" ... and the best of it was that nobody was ever foolish enough to resent her interference.
"If a holdish man likes to take too much," she would say sorrowfully, "it isn't me that can stop 'im, but with these young chaps just fresh from school, I must do my best according to my lights."
What becomes of the young chaps fresh from school where there is no Bobby to take care of them I wonder.
"As you know, sir," she continued, "I don't hold with drinkin' for drinkin's sake, but I do think that a gentleman should be able to take his glass sociable-like, and friendly. There don't seem no good fellowship in them there aereated waters, and I'm sure they ain't no good to a body's inside, by theirselves."