“Did yez come through the village, or over the moor?”
“Over the moor, I suppose; from that direction,” answered my Aunt.
“And why didn’t yez stop at ‘The Cat and Fiddle?’
“You mean the small alehouse near this. It was full of inebriated men,” answered Aunt Margaret, with dignity.
“Well, you may come in, ma’am, and the leedy that’s widge ye; but we can’t accommodate yer man, and he must only take the horse an’ carriage back to The Cat an’ Fiddle,’ an’ if that’ll answer, yez may come in; if not, yez must all go on, for we won’t let a man in after ten o’clock.”
My Aunt expostulated, but the portress was inexorable.
“We won’t let a man in after ten o’clock for Saint Payther, and that’s the holy all iv it,” she answered, firmly.
So, my Aunt submitted, and softening at the parting, gave Tom some shillings on account, and wished him good night; and when he had got upon the box, and started afresh for “The Cat and Fiddle,” and had made some way in his return, the door was shut in the faces of the spinsters, who stood, with their modest luggage, upon the steps, in the moonlight. The chain was withdrawn, and the hall of The Good Woman stood open to receive them.
I don’t know whether my Aunt had read Ferdinand Count Fathom, or ever seen the Bleeding Nun performed on any stage; but if she had I venture to say she was reminded of both before morning.
The woman with high-cheek bones, and somewhat forbidding face, stood before them on their entrance, with a brass candlestick raised in her hand, so that the light fell from above her head on the faces of the guests. She had allowed them without a helping hand to pull in their luggage, and was now making a steady and somewhat scowling scrutiny of my Aunt and Winnie.
“And yez come from Windherbrooke?” she said, after an interval, with a jealous glance still upon them.
My Aunt nodded.
“Yer mighty tall, the two o’ yez, I’m thinkin’ ” (another pause.) “Will I help yez off widge yer cloaks?”
My Aunt would have probably been tart enough upon this uncivil damsel, had it not been that her attention was a little called off by the sound of female lamentation indistinctly audible from a chamber near the hall.
She proceeded to remove their mantles, eyeing them, at the same time, with a surly sort of curiosity.
“We are cold, my good woman; we can sit for a while by the kitchen fire,” said my Aunt, recollecting herself.
“The kitchen’s all through other wid the sutt that’s tumbled down the chimbley; bud I’ll light yez a bit o’ fire in a brace o’ shakes in your bedroom. Is it dinner yez’ill be wanting?”
“Tea, please,” said my Aunt, “and eggs.”
“Lend a hand i’ ye plase, Missess, wid them things,” said she to Winnie, whom, with the quick instinct of her kind, she discovered to be the subordinate.
VI
The White Chamber
A fat slatternly woman, by no means young, with a face swollen and red with weeping, pushed open a side door, and standing behind the portress, gaped on them, and asked—
“Is it them, Nell?”
“Arra, ma’am, can’t ye keep quite. No it isn’t no one, but here’s two leedies ye see, that wants a bed an’ a fire, and a cup o’ tay in the white room. Come along i’ ye plase, my leedy.”
And in an’ aside, as she passed, my Aunt heard her say, close in the blubbered face of the fat woman—
“Arrah, ma’am, dear, will ye get in out o’ that, an’ shut the doore.”
The stout woman complied; and as they mounted the broad stairs, they again heard the sounds of crying.
This certainly savoured in no wise of the warm welcome for which inns are famous. The mansion, too, was old, wainscoted, and palpably altogether too large for its business. They met Boots coming down the stairs with a dingy kitchen candle and a hammer in his hand; a pallid fellow, with the sort of inquiring hangdog look that seemed to belong to the staff of The Good Woman. He stood close by the wall in the corner of the lobby as they passed by, and did not offer to carry up the trunk.
“Bring a guvvaul o’ wudd, will ye, Barney, jewel, to the white room?” said the handmaid over her shoulder.
My Aunt and Winnie followed her to the head of the stairs, where she placed the trunk, and this slight circumstance I mention, because it was immediately connected with my Aunt’s adventure, and she took a coal-scuttle instead, and conducting by two turns into a long wainscoted gallery, she opened a door on the right, and they entered a large square room, with a recess near one angle, two tall narrow windows, with white curtains rather yellow, and one very capacious bed, with curtains of the same. There was a skimpy bit of carpet near the hearth, and very scant and plain furniture.
The wood having arrived, Nell made a good fire, placed the deal table and two chairs near it, lighted a large mould of four to the pound, such as Molly Dumpling sported on the night of her dreadful adventure with William Gardner, and altogether the room began to put on its cheeriest looks. And when the tea-things, eggs, and buttered toast arrived, my Aunt and Winnie being well warmed by this time, sat down with their feet on the fender, the one mollified and the other consoled.
After tea, my Aunt, who was a fidgetty person, made a tour of the room, and a scrutiny of the open cupboard and drawers, but she found nothing, except an old black glove for the left hand, in one of the drawers.
When this was over she sat by the fire again, and speculated for Winnie’s instruction upon their geographical probabilities. But Winnie was growing sleepy.
“A double-bedded room would have been more comme il faut; but
