“And what do you say to all this?” I demanded of Belle.
“Stop a moment,” interposed the postillion, “I have one more word to say, and when you are surrounded by your comforts, keeping your nice little barouche and pair, your coachman and livery servant, and visited by all the carriage people in the neighbourhood—to say nothing of the time when you come to the family estates on the death of the old people—I shouldn’t wonder if now and then you look back with longing and regret to the days when you lived in the damp dripping dingle, had no better equipage than a pony or donkey-cart, and saw no better company than a tramper or gypsy,
except once, when a poor postillion was glad to seat himself at your charcoal fire.”
“Pray,” said I, “did you ever take lessons in elocution?”
“Not directly,” said the postillion, “but my old master, who was in Parliament, did, and so did his son, who was intended to be an orator. A great professor used to come and give them lessons, and I used to stand and listen, by which means I picked up a considerable quantity of what is called rhetoric. In what I last said, I was aiming at what I have heard him frequently endeavouring to teach my governors as a thing indispensably necessary in all oratory, a graceful pere—pere—peregrination.”
“Peroration, perhaps?”
“Just so,” said the postillion; “and now I’m sure I am not mistaken about you; you have taken lessons yourself, at first hand, in the college vacations, and a promising pupil you were, I make no doubt. Well, your friends will be all the happier to get you back. Has your governor much borough interest?”
“I ask you once more,” said I, addressing myself to Belle, “what you think of the history which this good man has made for us?”
“What should I think of it,” said Belle, still keeping her face buried in her hands, “but that it is mere nonsense?”
“Nonsense!” said the postillion.