Stranger.  Oh, sir, I don’t know.  I think that it is the charge all over the country.  Besides, it doesn’t do to look too closely at these things, and you must allow something for keeping up the coffee-room, you know—­fire, candles, and so on.

Jorrocks.  But blow me tight, you surely don’t want a candle to breakfast by?  However, I contends that innkeepers are great fools for making these sort of charges, for it makes people get out of their houses as quick as ever they can, whereas they might be inclined to stay if they could get things moderate.—­For my part I likes a coffee-room, but having been used to commercial houses when I travelled, I knows what the charges ought to be.  Now, this room is snug enough though small, and won’t require no great keeping up.

Stranger.  No—­but this room is smaller than the generality of them, you know.  They frequently have two fires in them, besides no end of oil burning.—­I know the expense of these things, for I have a very large house in the country, and rely upon it, innkeepers have not such immense profits as many people imagines—­but, as I said before, “live and let live.”

Jorrocks.  So says I, “live and let live”—­but wot I complains of is, that some innkeepers charge so much that they won’t let people live.  No man is fonder of eating than myself, but I don’t like to pay by the mouthful, or yet to drink tea at so much a thimbleful.  By the way, Sar, if you are not previously engaged, I should be werry happy to supply you with red Mocho or best Twankay at a very reasonable figure indeed for cash?

Stranger. Thank you, sir, thank you.  Those are things I never interfere with—­leave all these things to my people.  My housekeeper sends me in her book every quarter day, with an account of what she pays.  I just look at the amount—­add so much for wages, and write a cheque—­“live and let live!” say I. However, added he, pulling out his watch, and ringing the bell for the chambermaid, “I hate to get up very early, so I think it is time to go to bed, and I wish you a very good night, gentlemen all.”

Jorrocks gets up, advances half-way to the door, makes him one of his most obsequious bows, and wishes him a werry good night.  Having heard him tramp upstairs and safely deposited in his bedroom, they pulled their chairs together again, and making a smaller circle round the fire, proceeded to canvass their departed friend.  Jorrocks began—­“I say, wot a regular swell the chap is—­a Meltonian, too.—­I wonders who the deuce he is.  Wish Mr. Nimrod was among us, he could tell us all about him, I dare say.  I’m blowed if I didn’t take him for a commercial gentleman at first, until he spoke about his carriages.  I likes to see gentlemen of fortune making themselves sociable by coming into the coffee-room, instead of sticking themselves up in private sitting-rooms, as if nobody was good enough for them.  You know Melton, Mr. York; did you ever see the gentleman out?”