Page:A Study in Colour - Augusta Zelia Fraser.pdf/29

18 a golden harvest for their pains. They were doomed to disappointments. The hotels were there, but beyond the name they were of small use to luxurious and consumptive visitors.

They afforded shelter indeed, and a tolerably clean and habitable room, but for food, attendance, and all the other items that are generally regarded as part of a hotel's duty to provide, the less said the better.

The food was either cruelly deficient in quantity or curiously defective in quality. The attendance, at the best vague, was at the worst non-existent. Complaints were received with stony nonchalance, or looked upon as an unwarranted insult to the hotel management, the result being that after a week or two of more or less patient endurance of the evils, all independent travellers vanished in search of more desirable habitations. The unhappy mortals who by their occupations or necessities were tied to the spot, dragged on from day to day a precarious existence, and con soled themselves for their short commons and numerous small discomforts by incessant but unavailing growls.

How the Missus came to pass