“Yes?” said the carrier, with his eyes attracted to her face because she had spoken so earnestly. “Well, I am glad you feel so certain about it, because it makes me feel surer. It’s curious he should have taken it into his head to ask us for lodgings, ain’t it? Things come about so strangely.”
“So very strangely,” she rejoined in a low voice, scarcely audible.
“However, he’s a good-natured old gentleman,” said John, “and pays as a gentleman, and I think his word is to be relied upon, like a gentleman’s. I had quite a long talk with him this morning. He can hear me better already he says, as he gets more used to my voice. He told me a great deal about himself, and I told him a good deal about myself; and a rare lot of questions he asked me. I told him about having two routes, you know, in my business; one day going to the right from our house and back again, another day going left from our house and back again (for he’s a stranger, and don’t know the names of the places about here); and he seemed quite pleased. ‘Why,’ he says, ‘then I shall be returning your way to-night. I thought I’d be coming in exactly the opposite direction. That’s capital! I may trouble you for another lift, perhaps, but I’ll promise not to fall asleep again.’ He was sound asleep surely! Dot, what are you thinking of?”
“Thinking of, John? I—I was listening to you.”
“Oh! that’s all right!” said the carrier. “I was afraid, from the look of your face, that I had gone rambling on so long as to set you thinking of something else. I was very near it, I’ll be bound.”
Dot making no reply, they jogged on for some time in silence. But it was not very easy to remain silent long in John Peerybingle’s cart, for everybody on the road had something to say, though it might only be, “How are you?” and indeed it was very often nothing else. Sometimes passengers on foot or on horseback plodded on a little way beside the cart just for the pleasure of having a chat.
Then, too, everybody knew Boxer, all along the road—especially the fowls and pigs, who, when they saw him coming, running with his body all on one side and his ears pricked up inquisitively, would make tracks and not wait for any nearer acquaintance. Wherever he went, somebody or other might cry, “Hello! Here’s Boxer!” and with that, out came at least two or three other somebodies to bid John Peerybingle and his pretty wife good-day.
The packages and parcels to be delivered were as numerous as usual, and it required many stops to give them out. This was not the worst part of the journey by any means. Some people were so full of wonder about their parcels, and other people so full of directions about the parcels they were sending off by John, and John took so keen an interest in all the parcels, that it was as good as a play, and Dot thoroughly enjoyed it, as she looked on from her seat in the cart.
