s and carts are being driven
up and down just as fast as they can go, for the streets are as smooth
as floors, and in the morning and evening there are about half a dozen
coaches with four horses, and drivers and horn-blowers in red coats,
the horses prancing and whips cracking as they start out for country
trips or come back again. And as for the people on foot, they just
swarm like bees, and rain makes no difference, except that then they
wear mackintoshes, and when it's fine they don't. Some of these people
step along as brisk as if they hadn't anything the matter with them,
but a good many of them help out their legs with canes and crutches. I
begin to think I can tell how long a man has been at Buxton by the
number of sticks he uses.

One day we was sitting on a bench in The Slopes, enjoying a bit of
sunshine that had just come along, when a middle-aged man, with a very
high collar and a silk hat, came and sat down by Jone. He spoke civilly
to us, and then went on to say that if ever we happened to take a house
near Liverpool he'd be glad to supply us with coals, because he was a
coal merchant. Jone told him that if he ever did take a house near
Liverpool he certainly would give him his custom. Then the man gave us
his card. "I come here every year," he said, "for the rheumatism in my
shoulder, and if I meet anybody that lives near Liverpool, or is likely
to, I try to get his custom. I like it here. There's a good many 'otels
in this town. You can see a lot of them from here. There's St. Ann's,
that's a good house, but they charge you a pound a day; and then
there's the Old Hall. That's good enough, too, but nobody goes there
except shopkeepers and clergymen. Of course, I don't mean bishops; they
go to St. Ann's."

I wondered which the man would think Jone was, if he knew we was
stopping at the Old Hall; but I didn't ask him, and only said that
other people besides shopkeepers and clergymen went to the Old Hall,
for Mary Queen of Scots used to stop at that house when she came to
take the waters, and her room was still there, just as it used to be.

"Mary Queen of Scots!" said he. "At the Old Hall?"

"Yes," said I, "that's where she used to go; that was her hotel."

"Queen Mary, Queen of the Scots!" he said again. "Well, well, I
wouldn't have believed it. But them Scotch people always was
close-fisted. Now if it had been Queen Elizabeth, she wouldn't have
minded a pound a day;" and then, after asking Jone to ex