“Whose? That girl’s?” I asked.
“You horrid man!” returned my wife. “But I know you pretend to dislike roses.”
“Yes,” I said, “if metempsychosis is correct, I must have been killed two or three times during the Wars of the Roses. I believe, with the ancient Aztecs, that sin and sorrow came into the world through the first woman plucking a forbidden rose.”
“He is, perhaps, not quite so bad as the lady who had such a strong antipathy to this queen of flowers that she actually fainted when her lover approached her wearing an artificial one in his button-hole; nor as good Queen Bess’s lady-in-waiting, who disliked the flower so much that her cheek actually blistered when a white one was placed upon it as she slept. He is most like Tostig of old,” continued my wife.
“He cannot smell a rose but pricks his nose
Against the thorn and rails against the rose.”
Our position changed and so did the subject.
* * * * * *
The next day when we went over for our horses we found a most interesting discussion going on between the landlord and a man of a class somewhat too common in these hard times, an impecunious lawyer, concerning the right of the former to detain the horse of the latter for the hotel bill of the owner.
“You can’t do it,” said the poverty-stricken disciple of Coke. “No innkeeper can detain the other goods and chattels of a guest for payment of the expenses of a horse, nor a horse for the expenses of the guest. You can only keep my horse for the price of its own meat, and that has been paid for.[329] If a man brought several horses to your old inn, each one could be detained only for its own keep, and not for that of the others; and if you let the owner take away all but one, you could not keep that one until your whole bill was paid, but you would have to give it up on tender of the amount due for its keep.[330] Hullo!” he added, as he saw me, “here’s a gentleman who knows all about such things. “Is not what I state correct?” he coolly asked.
“Certainly,” I said, turning to the landlord. “Mr. Blackstone’s law is better than his pay; though, perhaps, Mr. Story may be said to doubt his last statement.”[331]