I handed him the key at once. Thenceforward I was simply a passenger
depending on his strong right arm for guidance, and at luncheon-hour
upon his alert and nimble, though slightly incurved, legs for
sustenance, the inn being often a mile away from my subject.
And the inns!--or rather my own particular inn--the White Hart at
Sonning.
There are others, of course--the Red Lion at Henley; the old Warboys
hostelry at Cookham; the Angler at Marlowe; the French Horn across the
black water and within rifle-shot of the White Hart--a most pretentious
place, designed for millionnaires and spendthrifts, where even chops and
tomato-sauce, English pickles, chowchow and the like, ales in the wood
and other like commodities and comforts, are dispensed at prices that
compel all impecunious, staid painters like myself to content themselves
with a sandwich and a pint of bitter--and a hundred other inns along the
river, good, bad, and indifferent. But yet with all their charms I am
still loyal to my own White Hart.
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