"How delightfully cool," said she, looking round the old-fashioned room appraisingly, "and so clean! I think we'll stop."
"Let's have tea before we decide," I suggested. "The proprietor is distinctly eccentric, to say the least of it."
"He looked quite a superior man. I thought," said Tony. "Not the least like a Welshman."
Tony herself comes from far north of the Tweed.
The hotel was small, and the kitchen, apparently, not far away, for we could not avoid hearing sounds of what appeared to be a heated argument coming from the direction in which mine host had vanished. We were used to heated arguments in the hotels at which we had put up, but they had invariably taken place in Welsh, whereas this one was undoubtedly in English. Snatches of it reached our ears.
"... haven't the pluck of a rabbit, Bill."
"... all very well, but——"
"I'm not afraid, I'll——"
Then our host returned.
"It's coming, it's coming, it's coming," he said, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, jingling loose change in a manner that suggested agitation.