"She has a sweet voice, but she don't take after her pa," she said, "and the young preacher student in the next room to the right of the one you have chosen is very much taken with her, and it looks like I'd get both girls off my hands before long."
She said she could not give me the use of the parlors when the girls wanted them.
"The Stateser comes a long ways, you know, and has to have it all to himself when he is here."
She generously suggested that if none "of them" were using the parlor at the time when my "company came," she would let me entertain my visitors in it at the rate of a "shilling a dozen," which arrangement I considered a very good one for me, as I did not expect to have more than a shilling's worth of visitors in six months.
Our meals were to be served in our own room, except on Sundays, when we would dine in the public dining-room and do our own "waiting," like the others. We did not exactly understand what that meant, but one day's experience proved it to be anything but comfortable. The dinner had all been cooked on Saturday and was cut up and piled on the table in the center of the room, and we served ourselves. I could not help thinking of the time when my Soldier had been served by butlers and waiters, each anxious to be the first to anticipate his wishes, and all feeling amply rewarded for every effort by a pleasant word or an appreciative smile. I wondered how any one of those obsequious attendants would feel to see us now.
The following menu was about the average dinner (with the exception, of course, that on week-days it was warm): Corned beef, mutton pie, potato salad, pickled snap-beans, gooseberry tarts and milk. Our breakfast was always cold; the first one was cold bread, preserves, a baked partridge (which is the same as our pheasant), and delicious coffee and butter.
Our rooms had one discomfort: we were awakened every morning by the young lady, who made love to the bird of her preacher beau while she arranged his room.
"Dear 'ittle birdie!—birdie dot a Dod?—birdie dot a soul?—'ittle birdie sings praises to Doddie?"
A sound as of the door opening, a rustling and a confused "Oh, dear!" and then "Good morning" was followed by the invariable excuse for not having finished tidying up the room and cage before he came, "because birdie and I are such friends—ain't we, birdie?—and time slips so quickly—don't it, birdie?"