Читать книгу Tom Brown at Rugby - Hughes Thomas - Страница 53

Have we not endured nobly this morning, and is not this a worthy reward for much endurance? There is the low dark wainscoted282 room hung with sporting prints; the hat-stand (with a whip or two standing up in it belonging to bagmen,283 who are still snug in bed) by the door; the blazing fire, with the quaint old glass over the mantel-piece, in which is stuck a large card with the lists of the meets for the week of the county hounds. The table covered with the whitest of cloths and of china, and bearing a pigeon pie, ham, round of cold boiled beef cut from a mammoth ox, and the great loaf of household bread on a wooden trencher.284 And here comes in the stout head waiter, puffing under a tray of hot viands; kidneys and a steak, transparent rashers285 and poached eggs, buttered toast and muffins, coffee and tea all smoking hot. The table can never hold it all; the cold meats are removed to the sideboard; they were only put on for show and to give us an appetite. And now fall on, gentlemen all. It is a well-known sporting house, and the breakfasts are famous. Two or three men in pink, on their way to the meet, drop in, and are very jovial and sharp-set, as indeed we all are.

"Tea or coffee, sir?" says head waiter, coming round to Tom.

"Coffee, please," says Tom with his mouth full of muffin and kidneys; coffee is a treat to him, tea is not.

Our coachman, I perceive, who breakfasts with us, is a cold-beef man. He also eschews hot potations, and addicts himself to a tankard of ale, which is brought him by the barmaid. Sportsman looks on approvingly, and orders a ditto for himself.

Tom has eaten kidney and pigeon pie, and imbibed coffee, till his little skin is as tight as a drum; and then has the further pleasure of paying head waiter out of his own purse, in a dignified manner, and walks out before the inn-door to see the horses put to. This is done leisurely and in a highly finished manner by the ostlers, as if they enjoyed the not being hurried. Coachman comes out with his way-bill,286 and puffing a fat cigar which the sportsman has given him. Guard emerges from the tap,287 where he prefers breakfasting, licking round a tough-looking doubtful cheroot, which you might tie round your finger, and three whiffs of which would knock any one else out of time.

The pinks288 stand about the inn-door lighting cigars and waiting to see us start, while their hacks are led up and down the market-place on which the inn looks. They all know our sportsman, and we feel a reflected credit when we see him chatting and laughing with them.

"Now, sir, please," says the coachman; all the rest of the passengers are up; the guard is locking up the hind-boot.

"A good run to you," says the sportsman to the pinks, and is by the coachman's side in no time.

"Let 'em go, Dick!" The ostlers fly back, drawing off the cloths from their glossy loins, and away we go through the market-place and down the High Street,289 looking in at the first-floor290 windows, and seeing several worthy burgesses291 shaving thereat; while all the shop-boys who are cleaning the windows, and the house-maids who are doing the steps, stop and looked pleased as we rattle past, as if we were a part of their legitimate morning's amusement. We clear the town, and are well out between the hedgerows again as the town clock strikes eight.