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As to Holman, experience had taught them that his fixed and staring eyes saw nothing: he sat mute and quiet the whole evening. In Mrs. Selvig's tap-room he found a remedy which made him insensible to moral lectures even the most reasonable and impressive.
In taking him under his care, therefore, the old man had probably an eye to a privileged corner in the tap-room and an occasional cup of cheerful ale free of expense. There is certainly something in angling if we could forget, which anglers are apt to do, the cruelties and tortures inflicted on worms and insects that tends to produce a gentleness of spirit and a pure serenity of mind.
When I reached the Old Swan, I chose a table in a remote corner of the tap-room, ordered a lobster from one of the maids, and, while waiting for it, drank a cup of wormwood wine.
"Then ye go afoot," coolly rejoined the other, grinning, "for the hoss goeth on wi' the rest." "What is this, Master Carew?" cried Nick, indignantly, bursting into the tap-room, where the players were at ale. "They will na let me have the horse, sir. Am I to walk the whole way back to Stratford town?"
A light shone through the open door at the end of the tap-room and the woman in black velvet appeared, carrying a lamp in her hand She was breathing rather hard and her carefully arranged gray hair was a little untidy; but she was quite calm and self-possessed. "We haven't a moment to lose!" she said, putting the lamp down on the table and blowing it out. "Bellward, give me my cloak!"
"And show me the best room in the house," remarked her sister. Mine host, bewildered by this shower of requests, stared from one to the other in helpless confusion, but finally collected his wits sufficiently to usher the company into the tap-room with: "Here you'll find a fire, but as for the best room, this gentleman" indicating the reticent guest "already occupies it."
The tap-room was low and narrow and dark. Round the once whitewashed walls there were rows of wooden benches with narrow trestle tables in front of them. Opposite the front door, on a larger table, were the bottles of wine and silvorium, the jars of tobacco and black cigars, which a beneficent government licensed Ignácz Goldstein the Jew to sell to the peasantry.
They had their own horses and said they were going to spend the night at Spanish Falls so's they could meet the down train that goes through at five o'clock in the morning. But hustle along, please. He's trying to talk and he's nearly gone." Barnes, buoyed by a sharp feeling of relief, followed the actor downstairs and into the tap-room.
Nothing was said, either by myself, my host, or the few laborers who strayed into the tap-room, which could, in the slightest degree, excite my mind, or set my fancy which is only a small fancy at the best of times playing tricks with my common sense. At a little after eleven the house was closed.
At any rate, whatever the motive, Slingsby drew towards the youth. They had many conversations in the village tap-room about foreign parts and the various scenes and places they had witnessed during their wayfaring about the world.
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