“Toasted cheese an’t good for a cough.”
“No; to be sure not. Well, you can fry a little bacon, and a few eggs, you know.”
“There an’t no eggs. I don’t know what’s come to the ’ens: they behaves ’orrid, they does.”
“Well, anything, anything, Molly. I’m very tired, and I don’t care what it is: we shall both be very glad to get to bed.”
“Lor, I dare say you be tired, sir,” said Molly, somewhat pacified. “You’ve had a very wet ride, to be sure; lawk-a-me, why this coat might be a-wringed out.” And she hastened to relieve her master of some of his outer wrappings, and supply him with a warm dressing-gown and slippers, in which he soon joined his guest in the little parlour; and having introduced him to the room he was to occupy for the night, left him also to make himself comfortable.
If Harry Bolton did not repent of his hospitality, which would have been very unlike him, yet, upon consideration, he certainly felt he was acting the good Samaritan somewhat more literally than he had ever expected to do.
“What on earth shall I do with him to-morrow, I should like to know?” was the first question that suggested itself—much more readily than did the answer. He could not be expected to go to church, perhaps; but would he stay quietly at home? or walk off to assist the very reverend Jabez at Mount Pisgah? As to his keeping his appointment at S——, that, at least, was out of the question; and, after all, there seemed so much good sense and feeling of propriety about the traveller, that it was most probable—at least Harry thought so—that he would not in any way offend against the rules of the household which he had entered under such circumstances.
So the curate brushed the clinging rain from his hair, and the cloud from his brow, with one and the same motion, and relapsed into his usual state of good-humour. Supper came in, and he and his guest sat down opposite to each other, and prepared to discuss old Molly’s simple cookery. Really, now that one could look at him well, the man was very presentable in person as well as in manner. Harry said grace in a very few words, and the other’s “Amen” was audible and unexceptionable; reverent, and not nasal. He had a capital appetite; it was said to be characteristic of his calling, but in that point Harry fully kept pace with him; and the conversation was not, for the present, a very lively one. Sam came in at last to take away.
“Sam,” said the curate, in a half-aside, “is there a bottle of port?—here’s the key.”
“La! sir, you bid me take it down to old Nan, you know; and it wor the last bottle, I tell’d you then.”