Some crusts of bread, some cold potatoes, and some tolerably strong beer, composed all the fare set before the traveller.
Despite his previous boasts, the young man made a wry face at these Socratic preparations, while he drew his chair to the board.

But his look grew more gay as he caught Alice's eye; and as she lingered by the table, and faltered out some hesitating words of apology, he seized her hand, and pressing it tenderly--"Prettiest of lasses," said he--and while he spoke he gazed on her with undisguised admiration--"a man who has travelled on foot all day, through the ugliest country within the three seas, is sufficiently refreshed at night by the sight of so fair a face." Alice hastily withdrew her hand, and went and seated herself in a corner of the room, when she continued to look at the stranger with her usual vacant gaze, but with a half-smile upon her rosy lips.
Alice's father looked hard first at one, then at the other.
"Eat, sir," said he, with a sort of chuckle, "and no fine words; poor Alice is honest, as you said just now." "To be sure," answered the traveller, employing with great zeal a set of strong, even, and dazzling teeth at the tough crusts; "to be sure she is.

I did not mean to offend you; but the fact is, that I am half a foreigner; and abroad, you know, one may say a civil thing to a pretty girl without hurting her feelings, or her father's either." "Half a foreigner! why, you talk English as well as I do," said the host, whose intonation and words were, on the whole, a little above his station.
The stranger smiled.

"Thank you for the compliment," said he.

"What I meant was, that I have been a great deal abroad; in fact, I have just returned from Germany.