[Original]
Tom was out of hearing of their shrewd opinions, and plodded on as steadily as he could go, until he came within sight of the turnpike where the tollman’s family had cried out ‘Mr Pinch!’ that frosty morning, when he went to meet young Martin. He had got through the village, and this toll-bar was his last trial; but when the infant toll-takers came screeching out, he had half a mind to run for it, and make a bolt across the country.
‘Why, deary Mr Pinch! oh, deary sir!’ cried the tollman’s wife. ‘What an unlikely time for you to be a-going this way with a bag!’
‘I am going to Salisbury,’ said Tom.
‘Why, goodness, where’s the gig, then?’ cried the tollman’s wife, looking down the road, as if she thought Tom might have been upset without observing it.
‘I haven’t got it,’ said Tom. ‘I—’ he couldn’t evade it; he felt she would have him in the next question, if he got over this one. ‘I have left Mr Pecksniff.’
The tollman—a crusty customer, always smoking solitary pipes in a Windsor chair, inside, set artfully between two little windows that looked up and down the road, so that when he saw anything coming up he might hug himself on having toll to take, and when he saw it going down, might hug himself on having taken it—the tollman was out in an instant.
‘Left Mr Pecksniff!’ cried the tollman.
‘Yes,’ said Tom, ‘left him.’
The tollman looked at his wife, uncertain whether to ask her if she had anything to suggest, or to order her to mind the children. Astonishment making him surly, he preferred the latter, and sent her into the toll-house with a flea in her ear.