All the assembled
eyes are turned on Mr. Jasper, white, half-dressed, panting, and
clinging to the rail before the Minor Canon's house.
CHAPTER XV--IMPEACHED
Neville Landless had started so early and walked at so good a pace,
that when the church-bells began to ring in Cloisterham for morning
service, he was eight miles away. As he wanted his breakfast by
that time, having set forth on a crust of bread, he stopped at the
next roadside tavern to refresh.
Visitors in want of breakfast--unless they were horses or cattle,
for which class of guests there was preparation enough in the way
of water-trough and hay--were so unusual at the sign of The Tilted
Wagon, that it took a long time to get the wagon into the track of
tea and toast and bacon. Neville in the interval, sitting in a
sanded parlour, wondering in how long a time after he had gone, the
sneezy fire of damp fagots would begin to make somebody else warm.
Indeed, The Tilted Wagon, as a cool establishment on the top of a
hill, where the ground before the door was puddled with damp hoofs
and trodden straw; where a scolding landlady slapped a moist baby
(with one red sock on and one wanting), in the bar; where the
cheese was cast aground upon a shelf, in company with a mouldy
tablecloth and a green-handled knife, in a sort of cast-iron canoe;
where the pale-faced bread shed tears of crumb over its shipwreck
in another canoe; where the family linen, half washed and half
dried, led a public life of lying about; where everything to drink
was drunk out of mugs, and everything else was suggestive of a
rhyme to mugs; The Tilted Wagon, all these things considered,
hardly kept its painted promise of providing good entertainment for
Man and Beast.
Pages:
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229