“You’ll have to go aloft, sir,” said the coachman, a stout and somewhat facetiously inclined individual, who, observing something of the sailor in Will’s costume and gait, suited his language to his supposed character; “there’s only one berth left vacant, on the fogs’l ’longside o’ myself.”
“Well, I’ll take it,” said Will.
Five minutes afterwards the guard shouted “all right,” and they set off.
“Do you happen to know many of the people in the town of B—?” said Will to the coachman, as they emerged from the suburbs and dashed out upon a long tract of moorland.
“Know many of ’em, sir,” said the man, tipping the off-leader on the flank by way of keeping his hand in; “I should ’ope I does; it’s two year, this very day, since I came to this ’ere part o’ the country, and I’ve got married in B— to a ’ooman as knows everythink and everybody, so, of course, I knows everythink and everybody, too.”
“Then you have heard of a Mrs Osten, no doubt, a widow lady?” said Will.
“Wot, the widder o’ that grumpy old gen’lman as died last year, leavin’, they say, a big estate in furrin parts?”
Will felt a tendency to seize the man by the throat, and tumble him off his box into the road, but on second thoughts he restrained himself and said—
“She is the widow of a gentleman with whom I was intimately acquainted. I did not know anything about his having estates abroad.”
“I axe your pardon, sir,” said the man, a little abashed by Will’s grave manner; “didn’t know they wos friends of yours. No offence, I ’ope. The old lady is raither low since her husband’s death—for it wos somewhat sudden—an’ they do say she’s never got over the runnin’ away of her only son—at least so my wife says, an’ she ought to know, for she’s bin intimate with the family for many years, an’ knows the ooman as nussed the boy—”