"How delightfully cool," said she, looking round the old-fashioned room appraisingly, "and so clean! I think we'll stop." "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. "Have a drink while you're waiting?" he asked, much more naturally. I looked at my watch. It was half-past four. Very free-and-easy with the licensing laws, I thought. "I thought six o'clock was opening time?" I said. The thin man was overcome with confusion. His face flushed red, he shut the window down with a bang, and a moment after came round to us again. "Awfully sorry," he stammered apologetically. "Might get the house a bad name. Deuced inconsiderate of--of my uncle not to leave me a book of the rules. Very bad break, that--what?" Evidently Tony was not so much impressed by the eccentricities of our host as was I. She approved of the hotel and its situation, and had made up her mind to stop. I could tell it by her face as she addressed the proprietor. "Have you accommodation if we should make up our minds to stay here for a few days?" she asked. "Stay here? You want to stay?" he repeated, consternation written large all over his face. "Good G---- I mean certainly, of course, of course." He bolted down the passage like a rabbit, and we heard hoarse whispering from the direction in which he had gone. "Dotty?" I suggested. "Not a bit of it," retorted Tony. "Nervous because he is new to his job, but very anxious to be obliging. We shall do splendidly here." I shrugged my shoulders and said no more, because I know Tony. I have been married to her for years and years. Light steps upon the tiles heralded something new--different, but equally surprising. "Tea is served, madam, if you will step this way."