"
"Let's have tea before we decide," I suggested. "The proprietor is
distinctly eccentric, to say the least of it."
"He looked quite a superior man. I thought," said Tony. "Not the least
like a Welshman."
Tony herself comes from far north of the Tweed.
The hotel was small, and the kitchen, apparently, not far away, for we
could not avoid hearing sounds of what appeared to be a heated argument
coming from the direction in which mine host had vanished. We were used
to heated arguments in the hotels at which we had put up, but they had
invariably taken place in Welsh, whereas this one was undoubtedly in
English. Snatches of it reached our ears.
"... haven't the pluck of a rabbit, Bill."
"... all very well, but----"
"I'm not afraid, I'll----"
Then our host returned.
"It's coming, it's coming, it's coming," he said, his hands thrust deep
in his trousers pockets, jingling loose change in a manner that
suggested agitation.
He stood looking down at us as though we were something he didn't quite
know what to do with, and then an idea seemed to strike him, and be
vanished for a moment to reappear almost immediately in the square gap
of the bar window.
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