“Oh! here, I say, you know. We’ve only just sat down.”
“Ain’t got more’n ’nother couple o’ minutes,” says the new guard; and so, appetite not fully satisfied, we all troop out and resume our places.
Our coach goes the hilly route, by Ferrybridge and Tadcaster, to York. We change on the short stage out of Doncaster, at Robin Hood’s Well, where the rival inns, the “New” and the “Robin Hood,” occupy opposite sides of the road; and again at Ferrybridge, at the “Swan,” where our smart coachman resigns his seat to an enormously fat man, weighing nearly, if not quite, twenty stone. He is so unwieldy that quite a number of the “Swan” postboys gather round him, and by dint of much sustained effort, do at last succeed in pulling and pushing him into his place, resembling in so doing the Liliputians manipulating Gulliver; the coachman himself, breathing like a grampus, encouraging them by calling out, “That’s it, lads; another heave like t’last does it. All together again, and I’ll mak’ it a gallon!”
Across the river Aire to Brotherton, and thence through Sherburn to Tadcaster, where, having changed at the “White Horse,” we come along a level stage into York; the new guard, who rejoices in the possession of a key-bugle and a good ear for music, signalising our entrance by playing, in excellent style, “The Days when we went Gipsying, a Long Time Ago.”
The coach dines at York. The “Black Swan,” to which we come, is a house historic in the annals of coaching, for it was from its door that the original York and London stage set forth; but it is a very plain and heavy building. Half an hour is allowed for dining, and, unlike the majority of houses down the road, the table-cloth and the knives and forks and glasses are not the only things in readiness.
“What have you got, waiter?”
“Hot roast beef, sir, just coming in; very prime.”
“Haven’t you any cold chicken for a lady here?”
“Yessir; cold chicken on the table, sir; in front of you, sir.”
“You call that chicken, waiter! why, it’s only a skeleton. Take it away and give it to the dog in the yard.”