‘Well, I declare,’ said she at length, ‘if it isn’t Mr. Newchum! How you have altered; got so sunburned too. I hardly should have known you. Well, it’s very good of you to come and see us again. Mother will be ever so pleased.’
‘I thank you for your welcome, Carry,’ said Ernest, smiling at the honest pleasure so clearly shown in the girl’s face; ‘I have a servant with me and two horses—can you put us up for the night?’
‘Oh yes. George will be round directly, if your man will take the horses into the yard. So you’re not walking now?’ asked she, with rather a mischievous look.
‘No, Carry, it takes too much time, not that it isn’t pleasant enough; but I suppose I shall get into all your lazy ways in time. Mind you take care of my man; he’s a capital fellow and a favourite of mine.’
‘Is he a native?’ asked the girl.
‘Yes, a countryman of yours,’ said Ernest.
‘Then he can take care of himself,’ said the damsel decidedly. ‘I’ll show you your room, sir, and see about your tea.’
It may be safely held that nothing is much more enjoyable in its way than a snug roadside inn, where the host and attendants are cheerfully willing to minister to the comfort of the wayfarer. The food may be plain, the cooking homely, but the prompt and unchilled service atones fully for want of artistic merit; and if the traveller carries with him the inimitable condiments of appetite and reasonable fatigue, the simple meal is a banquet for the gods, and sweet sleep arrives without delay to lull the satisfied traveller into luxurious dreamless rest.
Mr. Neuchamp thought that no club dinner had ever more thoroughly satisfied his every sense than the broiled steak, the fresh butter, the toast and eggs, all placed upon a snowy tablecloth, which the neat-fingered Carry put before him.
Before retiring, Ernest made a point of visiting his horse, as should every horseman worthy of the name. He found that trusty steed and the uncertain Ben Bolt up to their knees in straw, with their racks full of well-saved oaten hay, than which no horse, from England’s meads to the sand-strewn pastures where the desert courser roams, can desire better provender.