than
customers. One might well mistake her reception for a welcome. Her
house is a model, adding variety and abundance to the perfection,
in all but these attributes, of the table of an English inn, and
having the quiet and completeness, neatness and elegance, that have
made the English tavern a classic type of comfort. It seems this
house with its high repute, was the inheritance of two sisters from
their mother, of whom we were told an anecdote which may be
apocryphal, but which certainly would not be discordant with the
character of Sir Roger de Coverley. The old lady finished her
patriarchal days serenely, and when she was dying, begged that the
order of her house might be in no wise disturbed by the event of
her decease, but that 'the gentlemen would play their evening game
of whist as usual'!

Miss Jones's morning face was as benign as her evening countenance
had been. No lady could have administered hospitality with more
refinement. We were to be at the station before seven, and just as
our carriage-door was closing, it was reopened, and a rough but
decent country-woman was shoved in, the driver muttering something
about there being no other conveyance for her. My father looked a
little awry, not with any thought of remonstrating against the
procedure--no native American would do that, you know--but he was
just lighting his after-breakfast segar, and he shrunk from the
impropriety of smoking in such close quarters, with even such a
woman-stranger. 'I hope, madam,' he said, 'a segar does not offend
you?' 'La! no, sir,' replied our rustic friend most good-naturedly,
'I like it.' My father's geniality is always called forth by the
touch of his segar. He said, with a smile at the corners of his
mouth: 'Perhaps, madam, you would try one yourself.' 'I would!' she
answered eagerly. My father hospitably selected his best segar,
which she took, saying: 'Thank you kindly, sir. I s'pose I can
light it at the end of yours.' My dear, fastidious father
heroically breasted this juxtaposition, and the good woman,
unconscious of any thing but her keen enjoyment of the unlooked-for
boon, smoked away vigorously. Alice, who never loses sight of her
duty to avert a possible mischance from any human being, rather
verdantly suggested, 'that the segar might m