about ten o'clock
In about twenty minutes he returned , accompanied by a highly intelligent looking individual dressed in blue and black , with a particularly white cravat , and without a hat on his head ; this individual , whom I should have mistaken for a gentleman but for the intelligence depicted in his face , he introduced to me as the master of the inn . The master of the inn shook me warmly by the hand , told me that he was happy to see me in his house , and thanked me in the handsomest terms for the kindness I had shown to his servant in the affair of the thunder-storm . Then saying that he was informed I was out of employ , he assured me that he should be most happy to engage me to keep his hay and corn account , and as general superintendent of the yard , and that with respect to the horse , which he was told I had , he begged to inform me that I was perfectly at liberty to keep it at the inn upon the very best , until I could find a purchaser ; that with regard to wages -- but he had no sooner mentioned wages than I cut him short , saying that provided I stayed I should be most happy to serve him for bed and board , and requested that he would allow me until the next morning to consider of his offer ; he willingly consented to my request , and , begging that I would call for anything I pleased , left me alone with the postillion . I passed that night until about ten o'clock with the postillion , when he left me , having to drive a family about ten miles across the country ; before his departure , however , I told him that I had determined to accept the offer of his governor , as he called him . At the bottom of my heart I was most happy that an offer had been made , which secured to myself and the animal a comfortable retreat at a moment when I knew not whither in the world to take myself and him . The inn of which I had become an inhabitant was a place of infinite life and bustle . Travellers of all descriptions , from all the cardinal points , were continually stopping at it : and to attend to their wants , and minister to their convenience , an army of servants , of one description or other , was kept -- waiters , chambermaids , grooms , postillions , shoe-blacks , cooks , scullions , and what not , for there was a barber and hair-dresser , who had been at Paris , and talked French with a cockney accent , the French sounding all the better , as no accent is so melodious as the cockney .