He went forward in the dark and opened a door at the end of the passage.
A glow of ruddy light came through the doorway, and Wogan caught a
glimpse of a brick-floored kitchen and a great open chimney and one or
two men on a bench before the fire. Then the door was again closed. The
closing of the door seemed to Wogan a churlish act.
"The hospitality," said he to himself, "which plants a man in the road
so that a traveller on a rainy night may not miss his bed should at
least leave the kitchen door open. Why should I stay here in the dark?"
Wogan went forward, and from the careful way in which he walked,--a way
so careful and stealthy indeed that his footsteps made no sound,--it
might have been inferred that he believed the floor to be newly painted
too. He had, at all events, no such scruples about the kitchen door, for
he seized the handle and flung it open quickly. He was met at once by a
cold draught of wind. A door opposite and giving onto a yard at the back
had been opened at precisely the same moment; and as Wogan stepped
quickly in at his door a man stepped quickly out by the door opposite
and was lost in the darkness.
"What! Are you going?" the landlord cried after him as he turned from
the fire at which he was lighting a candle.
"Wilhelm has a wife and needs must," at once said a woman who was
reaching down some plates from a dresser.
The landlord turned towards the passage and saw Wogan in the doorway.
"You found your way, sir," said he, looking at Wogan anxiously.
"Nor are your walls any poorer of paint on that account," said Wogan as
he took his wet cloak and flung it over a chair.
The landlord blew out his candle and busied himself about laying the
table. A great iron pot swung over the fire by a chain, and the lid
danced on the top and allowed a savoury odour to escape. Wogan sat
himself down before the fire and his clothes began to steam.
"You laugh at my paint, sir," said the landlord. He was a fat,
good-humoured-looking man, communicative in his manner as a Boniface
should be, and his wife was his very complement. "You laugh at my
paint, but it is, after all, a very important thing. What is a great
lady without her rouge-pot, when you come to think of it? It is the same
with an inn. It must wear paint if it is to attract attention and make a
profit."