“Let the lady out!” squealed a little man, who sat on her left, whilst a stout gentleman on her right, after looking in vain for a check-string, gave a pull at the corner of the skirt of a great-coat that hung over the window, almost pulling the owner off the roof. The Chronometer stopped.
“It’s the lady,” said the little man to the coachman, as the latter appeared at the door; “she wants to be inside out.”
“It’s as the gentleman says,” added the female; “I an’t quite myself, but I don’t want to affect the fare. You shan’t be any loser, for I’ll discharge in full.”
“There’s the whole dicky to yourself, Ma’am,” said the coachman, with something like a wink, and after some scuffling and scrambling, we felt her seating herself on the “backgammon board” as if she never meant to be taken up.
“It seems ungallant,” said the little man, as we got into motion again; “but I think women oughtn’t to travel, particularly in what are called short stages, for they’re certain to make them long ones. First of all, they have been told to make sure of the right coach, and they spell it all over, from ‘Horne and Co.’ and ‘licensed to carry,’ to No. nine thousand, fourteen hundred and nine. Then they never believe the cads. If one cries ‘Hackney,’ they say ‘that means Camberwell, and I’ve had enough of getting into wrong stages.’ Then they have to ascertain it’s the first coach, and when it will start exactly, and when they’re sure of both points, they’re to be hunted for in a pastry-cook’s shop, and out of that into a fruiterer’s. At last you think you have ’em—but no such thing. All the luggage is to be put in under their own eyes—there’s a wrangle, of course, about that,—and when they’re all ready, with one foot on the step, they’ve been told to make their bargain with the coachman before they get in.”
“My own mother to a T,” exclaimed the fat man; “she agreed with a fly-man, at Brighton, to convey her to the Devil’s Dyke for twelve shillings; but when it came to setting off, she couldn’t resist the spirit of haggling. Says she, ‘What’ll you take me to the Devil for, without the Dyke?’”
A loud scream interrupted any further illustration of female travelling, and again the Chronometer stopped, losing at the rate of ten miles in the hour. We all had a shrewd guess at the cause, but the little man nevertheless thought proper to pop his little head out of the window, and enquire with a big voice “What the plague we were stopping for?”
“It’s the lady agin, Sir,” said the coachman, in a dissatisfied tone. “She says the dicky shakes so, she’s sure it will come off: but it’s all right now—I’ve got her in front.”
“It’s very well,” said the little man, “but if I travel with a woman again in a stage——”
“Poo! poo!—consider your own wife,” said the stout man; “women can’t be stuck in garden-pots and tied to sticks; they must come up to London now and then. She’ll be very comfortable in front.”