holland coat over his shirt-front, and in other ways toning himself down
to his ordinary everyday appearance, he entered the inn door.




7.


Elizabeth-Jane and her mother had arrived some twenty minutes earlier.
Outside the house they had stood and considered whether even this homely
place, though recommended as moderate, might not be too serious in its
prices for their light pockets. Finally, however, they had found courage
to enter, and duly met Stannidge the landlord, a silent man, who drew
and carried frothing measures to this room and to that, shoulder to
shoulder with his waiting-maids--a stately slowness, however, entering
into his ministrations by contrast with theirs, as became one whose
service was somewhat optional. It would have been altogether optional
but for the orders of the landlady, a person who sat in the bar,
corporeally motionless, but with a flitting eye and quick ear, with
which she observed and heard through the open door and hatchway the
pressing needs of customers whom her husband overlooked though close at
hand. Elizabeth and her mother were passively accepted as sojourners,
and shown to a small bedroom under one of the gables, where they sat
down.

The principle of the inn seemed to be to compensate for the antique
awkwardness, crookedness, and obscurity of the passages, floors, and
windows, by quantities of clean linen spread about everywhere, and this
had a dazzling effect upon the travellers.