"That's fortunate. Well, we must be attending to our business. I will pay the landlord, and give him some reason for riding on. While you are getting the animals ready, I will try to sound this valet a little deeper. Come."
Without another look behind, we hastened back to the inn.
"It's a fine evening," said I to the landlord, "and that gentleman I saw here awhile ago has given me the notion of riding on while the air is cool." I spoke as steadily as I could, and I suppose if the landlord detected any want of ease he put it down to the embarrassment of announcing a change of mind. In any case, he was not slow to compute the reckoning, nor I to pay it. Then, after seeing my bag and cloak brought down, I went in search of the young gentleman's valet. I found him in the kitchen, half way through a bottle of wine.
"Your master has not yet ridden on, then?" said I, dropping carelessly on the bench opposite him.
"No, Monsieur," he replied unsuspectingly. He seemed more like a country groom than a gentleman's body servant.
"I have decided to go on this evening, in imitation of him," I continued.
"Then your servant had better come back and finish his supper. It's getting cold yonder. Just as he was going to begin eating, he thought of something, and went out, and hasn't returned yet."
It was, alas, true. In my excitement I had forgotten all about Nicolas's supper, which he had left in order to see if I wanted my cloak for the cool of the evening.
"I sent him on an errand," I replied. "He shall sup doubly well later. As I was about to say, your master—by the way, if I knew his name I could mention him properly: we have so far neglected to give each other our names."
"Monsieur de Merri is my master's name, as far as I know it. I have been with him only since yesterday." He spoke in a somewhat disgruntled way, as if not too well satisfied with his new place.