Mr. Hughes did not like to be
disturbed, but he proved himself to be a man who could wake up
suddenly, shake his head, and transact business,--a sort of Napoleon,
in fact. Mr. Hughes stared at the intruders for a moment, as if he
meditated an assault.
"Do you live in Baddeck?" we asked.
"No; Hogamah,--half-way there."
"Will you take us to Baddeck to-day?"
Mr. Hughes thought. He had intended to sleep--till noon. He had
then intended to go over the Judique Mountain and get a boy. But he
was disposed to accommodate. Yes, for money--sum named--he would
give up his plans, and start for Baddeck in an hour. Distance, sixty
miles. Here was a man worth having; he could come to a decision
before he was out of bed. The bargain was closed.
We would have closed any bargain to escape a Sunday in the Plaster
Cove hotel. There are different sorts of hotel uncleanliness. There
is the musty old inn, where the dirt has accumulated for years, and
slow neglect has wrought a picturesque sort of dilapidation, the
mouldiness of time, which has something to recommend it. But there
is nothing attractive in new nastiness, in the vulgar union of
smartness and filth. A dirty modern house, just built, a house
smelling of poor whiskey and vile tobacco, its white paint grimy, its
floors unclean, is ever so much worse than an old inn that never
pretended to be anything but a rookery.
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