"Catchin' the whip like that--might 'ave 'ad us right into the 'edge,"
muttered Mr. Jackson, wishing his journey well over.
As they turned the corner the lights of Treliss burst into view.
CHAPTER II
SCAW HOUSE
I
Mr. Jackson inquired as to the hotel that Peter preferred and was told to
drive anywhere, so he chose The Man at Arms.
The Man at Arms had been turned, by young Mr. Bannister, from a small
insignificant hostelry into the most important hotel in the West of
England. It stood above the town, looking over the bay, the roofs of the
new town, the cottages of the old one, the curving island to the right, the
lighthouse to the left--all Cornwall in those grey stones, that blue sea,
the grave fishing boats, the flocks of gulls, far, far below.
Mr. Bannister had spared no trouble over The Man at Arms, and now it
was luxuriously modern Elizabethan, with an old Minstrels' Gallery kept
studiously dusty, and the most splendid old oak and deep fire-places with
electric light cunningly arranged, and baths in every passage. Of course
you paid for this skilful and comfortable romance, but Mr. Bannister
always managed his bills so delicately that you expected to find a poem
by Suckling or Lovelace on the back of them. When Peter had been last
in Treliss The Man at Arms had scarcely existed, but he was now utterly
unconscious of it, and stood in the dim square hall talking to Mr.
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