“Welcome, Squire Thornby!—a welcome to your Worship! I hope I see your Worship very well, sir.”
He took her obsequiousness as his due, and, with no more reciprocation than a complacent grunt, he bade her lay a cloth in the Rose and let his man Bartholomew bring to that room a round of cold beef and a quart of her best ale. With his snub-nosed crimson visage, he looked the part he had been born to fill in life; and was suitably dressed for it, too, in his brown wig, green cloth coat, brown waistcoat and breeches, large riding-boots, and plain, three-cornered hat.
“For I’m in haste to get home,” he added, “where I’ll pay myself for a cold dinner by a hot supper. So bestir, Mrs. Betteridge, and don’t keep me waiting.”
“Certainly, your Worship, sir; by all means, Squire Thornby.” And she called to a chambermaid, “Moll, lay a cloth for the Squire in the Thistle, and be quick—”
“I said the Rose, Mrs. Betteridge. Didn’t you hear? Thistle be damned!—I never said Thistle.”
“The Rose, Squire? The Thistle is far the better room—far the better, your Worship.”
“Lea’ me be the judge o’ that, woman. I’ll dine in the Rose, and there’s an end.” Whereupon he turned toward the stairs.
“Your pardon, Squire,—I wouldn’t offend your Worship for anything,—but the Rose is bespoke already for dinner-time, and truly indeed most o’ the quality that stops here prefers the Thistle.”
“But I prefer the Rose, and the quality that stop here may be hanged, rat ’em.”
“I’m terrible sorry, your Worship. But all’s ready in the Rose for t’other party, sir; and the gentleman as sent orders was most particular about having the Rose—though for my part I can’t see why he should want that room when he might ’a’ had the Thistle, and so I thought to myself at the time, sir; and when I seed your Worship arrive just now, thinks I to myself, how lucky it is t’other gentleman bespoke the Rose, because now there’s the Thistle for his Worship. And sure indeed the cloth’s laid for t’other party, and their dinner a’most cooked, and we expect them every minute—”