The Bertrams by Anthony Trollope Page A

cursed. But then he was not only tired and sore, but very hungry also. Our finer emotions should always be encouraged with a stomach moderately full.
    At last they stopped at a door in a wall, which the dragoman pronounced to be the entrance of Z——'s Hotel. In fact they had not yet been full ten minutes within the town; but the streets certainly were not well paved. In five minutes more George was in his room, strewing sofas and chairs with the contents of his portmanteau, and inquiring with much energy what was the hour fixed for the table d'hôte. He found, with much inward satisfaction, that he had just twenty minutes to prepare himself. At Jerusalem, as elsewhere, these after all are the traveller's first main questions. When is the table d'hôte? Where is the cathedral? At what hour does the train start tomorrow morning? It will be some years yet, but not very many, before the latter question is asked at Jerusalem.
    Bertram had arrived about a fortnight before Easter, and the town was already full of pilgrims, congregated for that ceremony, and of English and Americans who had come to look at the pilgrims.
    The inn was nearly full, and George, when he entered the public room, heard such a Babel of English voices, and such a clatter of English spoons, that he might have fancied himself at the top of the Righi or in a Rhine steamboat. But the subjects under discussion all savoured of the Holy Land.

    "Mrs. Rose, are we going to have a picnic on Monday in the Valley of Jehoshaphat; will you and your young ladies join us? We shall send the hampers to the tomb of Zachariah."
    "Thank you, Miss Todd; we should have been so happy, but we have only three days to do Bethlehem, the Dead Sea, and Jericho. We must be off tomorrow."
    "Mamma, I lost my parasol somewhere coming down the Mount of Offence. Those nasty Arab children must have stolen it."
    "They say the people in Siloam are the greatest thieves in Syria; and nobody dares to meddle with them."
    "But I saw it in your hand, my dear, at the Well of Enrogel."
    "What, no potatoes! there were potatoes yesterday. Waiter, waiter; who ever heard of setting people down to dinner without potatoes?"
    "Well, I didn't know what to say to it. If that is the tomb of Nicodemus, that seems to settle the question. May I trouble you for the salt?"
    "Mr. Pott, I won't have anything more to say to you; you have no faith. I believe it all."
    "What, all? from Calvary upstairs in the gallery down to the dark corner where the cock crew?"
    "Yes, all, Mr. Pott. Why should not a cock crow there as well as anywhere else? It is so beautiful to believe."
    George Bertram found himself seated next to a lady-like, well-dressed Englishwoman of middle age, whom he heard called Miss Baker;and next to her again sat—an angel! whom Miss Baker called Caroline, and whom an odious man sitting on the other side of her called Miss Waddington.
    All my readers will probably at different times have made part of a table d'hôte assemblage, and most of them, especially those who have travelled with small parties, will know how essential it is to one's comfort to get near to pleasant neighbours. The young man's idea of a pleasant neighbour is of course a pretty girl. What the young ladies' idea may be I don't pretend to say. But it certainly does seem to be happily arranged by Providence that the musty fusty people, and the nicy spicy people, and the witty pretty people do severally assemble and get together as they ought to do.
    Bertram's next-door neighbour was certainly of the nicy spicy order; but this did not satisfy him. He would have been very well pleased to talk to Miss Baker had it not been for the close contiguity of Miss Waddington; and even her once-removed vicinity would not have made him unhappy had not that odious man on her left had so much to say about the village of Emmaus and the Valley of Ajalon.
    Now, be it known to all men that Caroline Waddington is our donna primissima —the personage of most