The Ferret, thus threatened and consoled, brushed away his tears with his sleeve, emitting a muffled grunt. He had commenced with a howl, but, as if finding the pitch too high, he lowered it suddenly and ended with a sort of guttural, fractured sob; then seizing the other by the skirt, in this order of procession they reached Pilzer’s.
Boreas, Euroclydon, Eolus! whew, you gusty deities, your rude familiarities are the reverse of endearing, and we, alas! have not discovered the secret of propitiating you. Yet you deepen the enchanted halo encircling the ruddy fireside by the very force of contrast, as you wail dismally at the door, rattle the window-pane, or shriek down the chimney in your baffled efforts to effect an entrance.
The fatigue of their journey was soon forgotten by the wayfarers, their misery giving way to the placid emotions caused by an anticipated enjoyment of the warmth and well-earned repose so near at hand.
There was much to study in these two, because there was so little to discover. The elder was a man whose appearance guarded with sphinx-like obstinacy the secret of his age. He might be thirty or he might be sixty—no one could tell, and it was abundantly evident that few cared. He was tall and spare, with features which, if remarkable at all, were rendered negatively so by the absence of all salient characteristics, except a certain peculiarity about the eyes, one of which was brown, and the other, the left, a weak, watery gray. Such was Floog, the only name by which he was known; if he ever had any other it is buried with him.
The other member of the duo, of whom you have had a glimpse already, was nicknamed “The Ferret,” by what authority I cannot say—probably according to the accommodating law of contrariety, for there was nothing pertaining to him at all suggestive of that sprightly little quadruped. The ideal curve of beauty was straightened and flattened into obtuse angles in his contour in a way to make old Apelles or Phidias lament, however prized he might be as a subject for the pencil of Teniers. His features, too, were wanting in the seraphic beam of Fra Bartolomeo’s cherubs. Nevertheless, in form and feature he was sufficiently quaint to make one laugh at and love him. At a little distance he resembled a well-stuffed pillow on short legs. On closer view a head was discernible, something like those sometimes seen on old-fashioned door-knockers. Large, puffy cheeks, half-hiding a pretty little turn-up nose, a pair of small but bright blue eyes, no eyebrows, but an enormous mouth, and still more enormous chin—these belonged to a face in hue and texture very like putty, and formed altogether a combination which, if not very beautiful, had this counterbalancing attraction: that it was somewhat out of the commonplace.
But no delineation of pen or pencil could do justice to his expression. The wells of laughter and of tears, assuredly close beneath the surface, were for ever commingling in his organization; and so evenly were the external symptoms balanced that my grandaunt, a close observer, who had seen him often (and from whom, by the way, we had most of these details), could not for the life of her tell whether he was going to laugh or to cry at times when, in fact, he had no desire or intention to do either, so indeterminate was his habitual and passive expression.
The wooden hands of Pilzer’s Dutch clock pointed twenty-five minutes past eleven as these itinerants entered. Mine host was half-sitting, half-reclining in a large, square, straw-bottomed chair just inside of and facing the glass door that separated the travellers’ parlor from the front part of his premises. On hearing them enter he slowly roused from his semi-lethargy, and, taking his long pipe from between his lips, eyed the new-comers with a dubious glance, as if not quite satisfied whether they were customers or cut-throats, when Floog, drawing nearer to the glass door, brought him within range of that gentleman’s mild eye and reassured him. Floog on his part hesitated with an embarrassed air, and looked cautiously around, as if he had got into a coffin-maker’s shop by mistake. Presently he plucked up courage, and beckoning The Ferret, who stood sniffling at the front door, to follow him, advanced and knocked timidly at the dividing door.
The presiding genius of the “Admiral” was a very Machiavel of innkeepers. An experience of twenty-seven years had taught him a system of deportment toward, and treatment of, his customers measured and regulated—a sort of mental gradient, of which the gauge was the prospective length of his guest’s purse; and, to do him justice, he seldom erred in his calculations. On opening the door and confronting the strangers it was plainly visible that he was about to commence at zero in his welcome; for there was little prospect of pecuniary reward in the appearance of the man, his speculative gains being rendered still more doubtful by the additional allowance of a liberal discount for the appearance of the boy. His first word of chilly greeting removed all misgiving at one fell swoop; for, true to his system, at zero he began.
“What do you want at this time o’ night?” Just then he caught sight of a large portmanteau or travelling-wallet which Floog on entering had deposited on the floor. It was a favorable diversion, for no sooner had Pilzer espied it than his scale ascended two or three degrees, and, without waiting for an answer to his first inquiry, he added in a slightly altered tone: “What can I do for you?”
“I want lodging for me and my nephew,” said Floog bravely, and with a cheerful disregard of syntax. “We can pay for it; we’re not tramps.”