"Very well then," I reluctantly consented; and off we set for the abode of the formidable widow, and soon arrived before a little cottage with a piece of waste ground in front, shut off from the road by a hedge and a gate.
The shoemaker concealed himself behind the hedge, while I entered the gate and knocked at the cottage door, which was opened almost instantaneously by a tall, hard-featured, middle-aged female in a widow's cap. The door opened direct into the sitting-room, without the intervention of a hall or passage, and I was undoubtedly face to face with "the terror" herself. Fully sensible of my position, I raised my hat, and addressed her as follows:—
"I must ask pardon for my intrusion, but hearing that you were about to change your residence, I"——
"Change my ressidence! And may I make so bold as to hask who informed you I was going to change my res-si-dence?" she interrupted, tossing her head, and scornfully eyeing me.
"I understood so from your landlord this morning," I meekly responded.
"Oh! you did, did yer! Well, you can tell that bald-headed, goggling, mean little humbug of a cobbler that he's labouring under a miscomprehension!" With that the awful female banged the door in my face, and thus brought to an end my house-hunting in Cambridge. No sign of the cobbler could I see—he had evidently overheard "the terror's" concluding words and bolted.
I went back to my hotel dejected and out of spirits. On entering the reading-room, I found two gentlemen installed there—evidently new arrivals—who were smoking cigarettes and perusing newspapers. The younger one, a man of about thirty-five years of age, with a full beard and moustache, shortly after my entrance handed me the paper he had been studying, saying, "Perhaps you would like to see the Auckland Star, just arrived by the evening train."
I thanked him, and ran my eye over its columns. I did not take much interest in the New Zealand papers at that time, so was easily satisfied, and passed the paper on to the other occupant of the room, an elderly gentleman with a jovial countenance, whom the younger addressed as Doctor.
Acquaintances are soon made in New Zealand hotels, and in a very short time we were all three chatting as though we had known one another for months.