‘Please to step in, gentlemen.  This is the room, tonight.’

Evan lifted his hat; and bowing, requested to know whether they could have a supper and beds.

‘Beds, Sir!’ cried the hostess.  ’What am I to do for beds!  Yes, beds indeed you may have, but bed-rooms—­if you ask for them, it really is more than I can supply you with.  I have given up my own.  I sleep with my maid Jane to-night.’

‘Anything will do for us, madam,’ replied Evan, renewing his foreign courtesy.  ‘But there is a poor young woman outside.’

‘Another!’ The hostess instantly smiled down her inhospitable outcry.

‘She,’ said Evan, ‘must have a room to herself.  She is ill.’

‘Must is must, sir,’ returned the gracious hostess.  ’But I really haven’t the means.’

‘You have bed-rooms, madam?’

‘Every one of them engaged, sir.’

‘By ladies, madam?’

‘Lord forbid, Sir!’ she exclaimed with the honest energy of a woman who knew her sex.

Evan bade Jack go and assist the waggoner to bring in the girl.  Jack, who had been all the time pulling at his wristbands, and settling his coat-collar by the dim reflection of a window of the bar, departed, after, on his own authority, assuring the hostess that fever was not the young woman’s malady, as she protested against admitting fever into her house, seeing that she had to consider her guests.

‘We’re open to all the world to-night, except fever,’ said the hostess.  ‘Yes,’ she rejoined to Evan’s order that the waggoner and his mate should be supplied with ale, ‘they shall have as much as they can drink,’ which is not a speech usual at inns, when one man gives an order for others, but Evan passed it by, and politely begged to be shown in to one of the gentlemen who had engaged bedrooms.

‘Oh! if you can persuade any of them, sir, I’m sure I’ve nothing to say,’ observed the hostess.  ’Pray, don’t ask me to stand by and back it, that’s all.’

Had Evan been familiar with the Green Dragon, he would have noticed that the landlady, its presiding genius, was stiffer than usual; the rosy smile was more constrained, as if a great host had to be embraced, and were trying it to the utmost stretch.  There was, however, no asperity about her, and when she had led him to the door he was to enter to prefer his suit, and she had asked whether the young woman was quite common, and he had replied that he had picked her up on the road, and that she was certainly poor, the hostess said: 

’I ’m sure you’re a very good gentleman, sir, and if I could spare your asking at all, I would.’

With that she went back to encounter Mr. Raikes and his charge, and prime the waggoner and his mate.