The hostess drew up her thin figure, and the expression of a person about to compliment herself stole into the corners of her mouth.
“Why, you see, mem, I am very much in the habit of observing my guests, and I think I may say I knows a superior gentleman when I sees him. If you remember, mem,” (and she took down from the mantle-piece a much-worn copy of the Sketch-Book,) “Geoffrey Crayon tells the circumstance of my stepping in when it was getting late, and asking if he had rung. I knows it by that, and then the gentleman I mean was an American, and I think, mem, besides,” (and she hesitated a little, as if she was about to advance an original and rather venturesome opinion)—“I think I can see that gentleman’s likeness all through this book.”
A truer remark or a more just criticism was perhaps never made on the Sketch-Book. We smiled, and Mrs. Gardiner proceeded:—
“I was in and out of the coffee room the night he arrived, mem, and I sees directly by his modest ways and timid look that he was a gentleman, and not fit company for the other travellers. They were all young men, sir, and business travellers, and you know, mem, _ignorance takes the advantage of modest merit_, and after their dinner they were very noisy and rude. So, I says to Sarah, the chambermaid, says I, ‘That nice gentleman can’t get near the fire, and you go and light a fire in number three, and he shall sit alone, and it shan’t cost him nothing, for I like the look on him.’ Well, mem, he seemed pleased to be alone, and after his tea, he puts his legs up over the grate, and there he sits with the poker in his hand till ten o’clock. The other travellers went to bed, and at last the house was as still as midnight, all but a poke in the grate now and then in number three, and every time I heard it, I jumped up and lit a bed-candle, for I was getting very sleepy, and I hoped he was getting up to ring for a light. Well, mem, I nodded and nodded, and still no ring at the bell. At last I says to Sarah, says I, ‘Go into number three, and upset something, for I am sure that gentleman has fallen asleep.’—‘La, ma’am,’ says Sarah,’I don’t dare.’ ‘Well, then,’ says I, ‘I’ll go.’ So I opens the door, and I says, ‘If you please, sir, did you ring?’—little thinking that question would ever be written down in such a beautiful book, mem. He sat with his feet on the fender poking the fire, and a smile on his face, as if some pleasant thought was in his mind. ‘No, ma’am,’ says he, ‘I did not.’ I shuts the door, and sits down again, for I hadn’t the heart to tell him that it was late, for _he was a gentleman not to speak rudely to_, mem. Well, it was past twelve o’clock when the bell _did_ ring. ‘There,’ says I to Sarah, ‘thank Heaven he has done thinking, and we can go to bed.’ So he walked up stairs with his light, and the next morning he was up early and off to the Shakspere house, and he brings me home a box of the mulberry tree, and asks me if I thought it was genuine, and said it was for his mother in America. And I loved him still more for that, and I’m sure I prayed she might live to see him return.”