“Feng is very fond of you,” he added, “and we’ll have a real pleasant evening together.”
Back again at Russell Square I looked at the time-table, dressed leisurely and packing a suitcase, took the evening train from King’s Cross and having had my dinner between London and Peterborough arrived at the ancient little town of Stamford in the late evening.
It was, I found, a place of quaint crooked streets and old churches, dim alleyways and a curious square with an ancient Butter Market close by the old-world hotel, the Cross Keys, once one of the famous posting-houses on the Great North Road.
Beyond three or four motorists and commercial travelers, I seemed to be about the only person in the hotel, a roomy comfortable place with many paneled rooms, and polished floors. About it was that air of cozy comfort and cheery welcome such as one finds to perfection in the too few old English posting-inns. The coffee-room was bounded by huge mahogany buffets laden with silver, and the drawing-room was devoid of that gimcrack furniture which one finds in most modern hotels.
My room, too, was big and spacious, with a window looking out upon the great courtyard into which the stage-coaches on their way from London to Edinburgh used to lumber before the days of motors. Yet even there I saw a row of stables and was informed by the “boots” that in winter a good many London gentlemen stabled their hunters there.
In the twilight, having nothing better to do, I strolled out of the town along a path which led through meadows beside the Welland river where many people seemed to be enjoying the fresh air after the unusual heat of the day, while many anglers sat patiently upon the banks.
It was dark when I returned to the hotel, and passing into the smoking-room I found several men there, unmistakably commercial travelers. I chatted with one of them, a tall, rugged-faced, sharp-nose man in tweeds who spoke with a full Yorkshire burr, and whose business was undoubtedly “woolens.”
“I come here four times a year,” he told me. “This hotel is one of the best in the Midlands. The Bell at Barnby Moor is excellent, but a bit out of the way for us. We have to stay in Doncaster. Half our game is to know where to go, and how to live. A commercial’s life is a pretty tough one now-a-days, with high prices in traveling and cut prices in the trade.”
He seemed a particularly affable person, though his manner possessed that business-like briskness which characterizes all men “on the road.” I set him down as a man who could sell a tradesman nearly anything, whether he desired it or not—one of those particularly “smart” men found as travelers in every trade, shrewd, clever and far-seeing, yet suave ambassadors of commerce who are invaluable to wholesalers and manufacturers.
“I’ve had bad luck here today,” he said. “I was kept over-night in Peterborough and got here at eleven o’clock. Started out and forgot that it is their early-closing day. So I’m compelled to be here tomorrow instead of getting on to Bourne. One can work this town well in a whole day—not less.”