“What they chose,” said Tod, cracking his fourth egg.
“I am afraid the pater——”
“Now, Johnny, you need not put in your word,” he interrupted, in the off-hand tone that always silenced me. “It’s not your affair. We came out for a month, and I am not going back home, like a bad sixpence returned, before the month has expired. Perhaps I shall tack a few weeks on to it. I am not dependent on the pater’s purse.”
No; for he had his five hundred pounds lying untouched at the Worcester Old Bank, and his cheque-book in his pocket.
Breakfast over, we went out to look for lodgings; but soon feared it might be a hopeless search. Two little cottages had a handboard stuck on a stick in the garden, with “Lodgings” on it. But the rooms in each proved to be a tiny sitting-room and a more tiny bedroom, smaller than the garret at the Whistling Wind.
“I never saw such a world as this,” cried Tod, as we paced disconsolately before the straggling dwellings in front of the bay. “If you want a thing you can’t get it.”
“We might find rooms in those houses yonder,” I said, nodding towards some scattered about in the distance. “They must be farms.”
“Who wants to live a mile off?” he retorted. “It’s the place itself I like, and the bay, and the—— Oh, by George! Look there, Johnny!”
We had come to the last house in the place—a fresh-looking, charming cottage, with a low roof and a green verandah, that we had stopped to admire yesterday. It faced the bay, and stood by itself in a garden that was a perfect bower of roses. The green gate bore the name “Rose Lodge,” and in the parlour window appeared a notice “To Let;” which notice, we both felt sure, had not been there the previous day.
“Fancy their having rooms to let here!” cried Tod. “The nicest little house in all the place. How lucky!”