“Oh, don’t let’s go in there! Let’s go on a bit further, and see if there isn’t one with honeysuckle over it.”
So we went on till we came to another hotel. That was a very nice hotel, too, and it had honeysuckle on it, round at the side; but Harris did not like the look of a man who was leaning against the front door. He said he didn’t look a nice man at all, and he wore ugly boots: so we went on further. We went a goodish way without coming across any more hotels, and then we met a man, and asked him to direct us to a few.
He said:
“Why, you are coming away from them. You must turn right round and go back, and then you will come to the Stag.”
We said:
“Oh, we had been there, and didn’t like it—no honeysuckle over it.”
“Well, then,” he said, “there’s the Manor House, just opposite. Have you tried that?”
Harris replied that we did not want to go there—didn’t like the looks of a man who was stopping there—Harris did not like the colour of his hair, didn’t like his boots, either.
“Well, I don’t know what you’ll do, I’m sure,” said our informant; “because they are the only two inns in the place.”
“No other inns!” exclaimed Harris.
“None,” replied the man.
“What on earth are we to do?” cried Harris.
Then George spoke up. He said Harris and I could get an hotel built for us, if we liked, and have some people made to put in. For his part, he was going back to the Stag.
The greatest minds never realise their ideals in any matter; and Harris and I sighed over the hollowness of all earthly desires, and followed George.
We took our traps into the Stag, and laid them down in the hall.
The landlord came up and said:
“Good evening, gentlemen.”
“Oh, good evening,” said George; “we want three beds, please.”
“Very sorry, sir,” said the landlord; “but I’m afraid we can’t manage it.”
“Oh, well, never mind,” said George, “two will do. Two of us can sleep in one bed, can’t we?” he continued, turning to Harris and me.
Harris said, “Oh, yes;” he thought George and I could sleep in one bed very easily.
“Very sorry, sir,” again repeated the landlord: “but we really haven’t got a bed vacant in the whole house. In fact, we are putting two, and even three gentlemen in one bed, as it is.”
This staggered us for a bit.
But Harris, who is an old traveller, rose to the occasion, and, laughing cheerily, said:
“Oh, well, we can’t help it. We must rough it. You must give us a shakedown in the billiard-room.”
“Very sorry, sir. Three gentlemen sleeping on the billiard-table already, and two in the coffee-room. Can’t possibly take you in tonight.”
We picked up our things, and went over to the Manor House. It was a pretty little place. I said I thought I should like it better than the other house; and Harris said, “Oh, yes,” it would be all right, and we needn’t look at the man with the red hair; besides, the poor fellow couldn’t help having red hair.
Harris spoke quite kindly and sensibly about it.
The people at the Manor House did not wait to hear us talk. The landlady met us on the doorstep with the greeting that we were the fourteenth party she had turned away within the last hour and a half. As for our meek suggestions of stables, billiard-room, or coal-cellars, she laughed them all to scorn: all these nooks had been snatched up long ago.
Did she know of any place in the whole village where we could get shelter for the night?
“Well, if we didn’t mind roughing it—she did not recommend it, mind—but there was a little beershop half a mile down the Eton road—”
We waited to hear no more; we caught up the hamper and the bags, and the coats and rugs, and parcels, and ran. The distance seemed more like a mile than half a mile, but we reached the place at last, and rushed, panting, into the bar.
The people at the beershop were rude. They merely laughed at us. There were only three beds in the whole house, and they had seven single gentlemen and two married couples sleeping there already. A kindhearted bargeman, however, who happened to be in the taproom, thought we might try the grocer’s, next door to the Stag, and we went back.
The grocer’s was full. An old woman we met in the shop then kindly took us along with her for a quarter of a mile, to a lady friend of hers, who occasionally let rooms to gentlemen.
This old woman walked very slowly, and we were twenty minutes getting to her lady friend’s. She enlivened the journey by describing to us, as we trailed along, the various pains she had in her back.
Her lady friend’s rooms were let. From there we were recommended to No. 27. No. 27 was full, and sent us to No. 32, and 32 was full.
Then we went back into the high road, and Harris sat down on the hamper and said he would go no further. He said it seemed a quiet spot, and he would like to die there. He requested George and me to kiss his mother for him, and to tell all his relations that he forgave them and died happy.
At that moment an angel came by in the disguise of a small boy (and I cannot think of any more effective disguise an angel could have assumed), with a can of beer in one hand, and in the other something at the end of a string, which he let down on to every flat stone he came across, and then pulled up again, this producing a peculiarly unattractive sound, suggestive of suffering.
We asked this heavenly messenger (as we discovered him afterwards to be) if he knew of any lonely house, whose
