Where the crop had
been got in, much ploughing for the next year had been done
already, and where the ploughing was finished the work of sowing
by drill was going steadily forward, in the faith that such an
unprecedented summer as was now passing would return another
year. At all these pleasant labors, of course, the rooks were
helping, or at least bossing.
II
We expected to stay certainly a week, and perhaps two weeks, in
York, and our luck with railway hotels had been so smiling
elsewhere that we had no other mind than to spend the time at the
house into which we all but stepped from our train. But we had
reckoned without our host, as he was represented by one of a
half-dozen alert young ladies in the office, who asked how long
we expected to stay, and when we expressed a general purpose of
staying indefinitely, said that all her rooms were taken from the
next Monday by people who had engaged them long before for the
races. I did not choose to betray my ignorance to a woman, but I
privately asked the head porter what races those were which were
limiting our proposed sojourn, and I am now afraid he had some
difficulty in keeping a head porter's conventional respect for a
formal superior in answering that we had arrived on the eve of
Doncaster Week.
Pages:
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61