------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE landlady came bouncing out, followed by her husband at a more dignified gait, to receive the newcomers. Indifferent to their salutations, Mr. Foxwell stepped quickly from the chaise and offered his hand to his niece, who scarcely more than touched it in alighting. Caleb meanwhile ran up to assist the maid, but was forestalled by Mr. Betteridge, who performed the office with a stately gallantry quite flustering to the young woman, causing her to blush, and her legs, stiff with the constraint of the journey, to stumble. Miss Foxwell and the maid followed the landlady immediately to the entry and up the stairs; but Mr. Foxwell, as he saw Squire Thornby gazing at him in sullen defiance, stopped to greet that gentleman in the suavest possible manner.
“Yes, sir,” replied the Squire, in the shortest of tones, and as if determined to show himself proof against the other’s urbanity; “attending to my own business.”
“An unusual circumstance, I suppose,” said Foxwell, pleasantly, “as you think it worth mentioning. A dull sort of day.”
“I dare say,” was Thornby’s savage reply.
Not the least altering his amiable tone or half-smiling countenance, Foxwell continued: “Smooth roads—that is to say, for these remote parts.”
“Sir,” said Thornby, fiercely, conceiving himself and his county alike disparaged, “I find these parts quite good enough for me.”
“Indeed, I envy you,” said Foxwell, with a slight plaintiveness. “I wish from my heart I could say I find them good enough for me—since I am doomed to live in them.”
That anything good enough for Thomas Thornby could not be good enough for another man was not a proposition soothing to Thomas Thornby’s soul. Having no fit retort within present grasp of his tongue, however, and knowing that even if he had one, his adversary would find a better one to cap it with, the Squire contented himself with a fiery glare and an inward curse. Then saying abruptly to his servant, “See that my dinner is served the moment it’s ready, Bartholomew,” he entered the inn and tramped up the stairs with great weight of heel.
Foxwell laughed scarce audibly, and followed with a step as light as the other’s was heavy. Emerging from the stair-head to a passage that divided the rear from the front rooms, he went into one of the latter, where he found the table set, and his niece and her maid at the window, looking down at the street. Across the way were a baker’s shop, a draper’s, a rival inn with gables and a front of timber and plaster; and so forth. A butcher’s boy with a tray of meat, a townswoman with a child by the hand, and two dogs tumbling over each other, were the moving figures in the scene—until a clatter of horses and a rumble of wheels were heard, and then the maid exclaimed: