"That's it, sir," said the coachman.
"Very well," said Bologna, without the slightest alteration of tone or manner; "then I shall do neither the one nor the other."
The coachman, falling back a space or two from the door, and recovering from a brief trance of astonishment, addressed the passengers, the would-be passenger, the ostlers and stable-boys, who were standing around, upon the mean and shabby conduct of the individual inside, upon this, the passengers remonstrated, the would-be passenger stormed, the coachman and guard bellowed, the ostlers hooted, the stable-boys grinned, Grimaldi worked himself into a state of intense vexation, and the cause of all the tumult sat quite immovable.
"Now, I'll tell you what it is," said the coachman, when his eloquence was quite exhausted, "one word's as good as a thousand. Will you get out?"
"No, I will not," answered the sleepy Harlequin.
"Very well," said the man; "then off goes my benjamin, and out you come like a sack of saw-dust."
As the man was of that portly form and stout build which is the badge of all his tribe, and as, stimulated by the approving murmurs of the lookers-on, he began suiting the action to the word without delay, Bologna thought it best to come to terms; so turned out into the cold air, and took his seat on the coach-top, amidst several expressions of very undisguised contempt from his fellow-passengers.
They performed the rest of the journey in this way, and Grimaldi, alighting at the Angel at Islington, left Bologna to go on to the coach-office in Holborn, previously giving both the guard and coachman something beyond their usual fee, as an intelligible hint that he was not of the same caste as his companion.
Two or three days afterwards, meeting Bologna in the street, he inquired how he had got on at the coach-office.