A Wet Sunday In A Country Inn

 

A wet Sunday in a country inn ! Whoever has had the luck to experience one(1) can alone judge of(2) my situation. The rain pattered against the casements; the bells tolled for church with a melancholy sound. I went to the windows in quest of something to amuse the eye; but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of the reach of ail amusement. The windows of my bed-room looked out(3) among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys, while those of my sitting-room commanded a full view of(4) the stable yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a stable yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw that had been kicked about by travellers and stable-boys. In one corner was a stagnant pool of water, surrounding an island of muck; there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable, crest-fallen cock, drenched out of ail life and spirit; his drooping tail matted, as it were, into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his hack; near the cart was a half- dozing cow, chewing her cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapour(5) rising from her reeking

hide; a wall-eyed(6) horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by, uttered something every now and then between a bark and a yelp; a drab of a kitchen wench(7) tramped backwards and forwards through the yard in pat- tens, looking as sulky as the weather itself; everything, iq short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hardened ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle and making a riotous noise over their liquor.