“ ‘It’s nothing affectionate, sir,’ says he. ‘Only paralysis, which ain’t catching. The gentleman won’t trouble you.’
“ ‘Not for my place,’ says the fierce gentleman, bristling up like a dog. ‘Damme, sir, not for my place. O, I can see very well what his nose is a-pinting to, and damme if it isn’t as monstrous a piece of coolness as ever I expeerunced. These seats, sir, are the nat’ral perkisite of a considerate punctiality, and if your friend objects to travelling with his back to the ’orses——’
“ ‘Now, now,’ says the fat man—‘nothing of the sort. You don’t mind sitting with your back to the ’orses, do you, nunky?”
“ ‘Eh,’ says the old man, ’usky-like, and starting a bit forward—‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no—’ and he sunk into the front cushions, while Cato and the fat ’un dispodged him to his comfort.
“ ‘Time, gentlemen!’ says I.
“ ‘Wait a bit’ says snarler. ‘It can’t never be—why, surely, it can’t never be that the sixth inside is took for a blackamoor?’
“ ‘Alfred,’ says the lady, half veeping: ‘pray let things be. It’s only as far as Cuckfield we’re goin’, arter all.’
“ ‘A poor argiment, my dear,’ says he, ‘in favour of suffering forty miles of a sulphurious devil.’
“ ‘Pray control yourself, sir,’ says the fat man, still very ekable. ‘We’ve booked three places, for two, just to be comfortable. Our servant rides outside.’
“Well, that settled it; and in another minute we was off. I laughed a bit to myself as I swung up; but I hadn’t a thought of suspicion. What do you say, sir? Would you have? Why, no, of course not—no more than if you was a Lyons Mail. There was the five o’ them packed in there, and one on the roof behind the coachman—three divisions of a party as couldn’t have seemed more unconnected with one another, or more cat and dog at that. Yet, would you believe it, every one of them six had his place in the robbery that follered as carefully set for him as a figure in a sum.