Kate laughed, and dragged herself from her chair. Indeed, she was dead tired; but none the less she was determined to see this thing out. So the three of them proceeded along to the village as far as the inn—which was a plain little two-storeyed building, with not even a sign hanging over the door; and there they went into the stuffy little parlour, and sate down, Mr. Purdie ringing the bell and sending for the landlord.
"Aren't those things dreadful?" said Mary, glancing around at the hideous stone and china ornaments on the mantelshelf and elsewhere—pink greyhounds chasing a yellow hare; bronze stags that could only have been designed in wild delirium; impossible white poodles on a ground of cobalt blue, and the like; while on the walls were two gaudy lithographs—German-looking nymphs with actual spangles in their hair and bits of gold and crimson tinsel round their neck. "I must have all this altered throughout the cottages——"
"Oh, yes, Mamie," said Käthchen; "Broussa silks—Lindos plates—a series of etchings——"
But here was the landlord, a rather youngish and shortish man, who seemed depressed and dismal, and also a little apprehensive.
"Well, Peter," said Mr. Purdie, in his merry way, "what are ye frightened for? Ye've got a face as if ye'd murdered somebody. We're not going to raise your rent."
"It would be little use that—for I could not pay it," said the sad-looking young man with the cadaverous grey face and grey eyes.
"Won't you take a seat?" said Miss Stanley, interposing. "I have a proposal to make to you."
Peter Grant did not answer: he remained standing, stolidly and in silence.
"It seems to me," she went on, "that something should be done to bring visitors here in the spring, as well as the few that come through this way in the autumn. It would be a benefit all round—to the inn, and to the gillies who would be required, I mean for the salmon-fishing in the Garra. Now I don't particularly want the salmon-fishing in the spring months; and it seems to me if you were enterprising you would rent it from me, and advertise it, and let it to two or three gentlemen, who would come and live in your house, and give you a good profit. Do you see?"
He answered not a word; he kept his eyes mostly fixed on the carpet; so she continued—