I once agreed in times gone by to “conwoy” Mrs Scribe and her sister, Miss Bellefille, as far as Richmond. ’Twas summer time, and our imaginations were full of sparkling rivers, green eyots, silver swans, and—well, yes, I’ll own it, the carnal delights of a Star and Garter dinner, with the following cigar. There was the rail, certainly, but in preference thereto I hired one of her Majesty’s carriages, VR 123,456. Our buttons had not come up in those days, so I fetched the vehicle from the stand, and rode back beside the driver. Upon reaching Miranda Villas, I lightly leaped down and rang the bell. Wonderful to relate, the ladies waited ready in the passage, and after handing them into the cab, I again mounted to the box, for the purpose of smoking upon the way down.
We were moving off when a voice was heard from the interior of the cab—“George, I’ve left my handkerchief upon the dressing-table; ask Harriet to fetch it down.”
I arrested the driver, who seemed to be regarding me rather superciliously, which I attributed to insignificance of appearance, when he exclaimed:—
“Now, Jarge, fetch the missus’s wipe, and look alive.”
“Confound his impudence,” I muttered, “he takes me for the attendant;” and then, with what must have been a decidedly melodramatic, tyrannical-baron-like scowl upon my brow, I resummoned the abigail, and obtained the required piece of cambric.
The feeling of indignation had fled as I reseated myself, and during the drive down I omitted the smoke, and suffered the driver to discourse fancy free.
He had an agreeable voice, had this Cabby—husky and wheezy; and but for an unpleasant habit of expectorating at the flies which settled upon the shafts, he might have proved an agreeable companion. Curiosity, however, seemed to be one of his failings, for addressing me in a mock provincial style as “Jarge,” and at the same time forcing his voice somewhere down into the cavernous recesses beneath his waistcoat, he began to catechise me after an approved method of his own.
“New hand?”—I nodded.
“Measured for your livery?”
“What?” I said.