The driver glanced at Martin’s soiled dress, and his damp shirt-sleeves, and his coat hung up to dry; and said, after a pause, as he warmed his hands:
‘You have been caught in it, sir?’
‘Yes,’ was the short reply.
‘Out riding, maybe?’ said the driver
‘I should have been, if I owned a horse; but I don’t,’ returned Martin.
‘That’s bad,’ said the driver.
‘And may be worse,’ said Martin.
Now the driver said ‘That’s bad,’ not so much because Martin didn’t own a horse, as because he said he didn’t with all the reckless desperation of his mood and circumstances, and so left a great deal to be inferred. Martin put his hands in his pockets and whistled when he had retorted on the driver; thus giving him to understand that he didn’t care a pin for Fortune; that he was above pretending to be her favourite when he was not; and that he snapped his fingers at her, the driver, and everybody else.
The driver looked at him stealthily for a minute or so; and in the pauses of his warming whistled too. At length he asked, as he pointed his thumb towards the road.
‘Up or down?’