“Can’t say I do.”
“That was a teaser,” said the coachman. He gave four slaps to each shoulder. “Snowed up jest afore we got to Reading. No chance of escape. Not a bit of food after the third day. Fortunately, the guard was a plumpish man; Tom Bates his name was; the chap who’s with us to-day is thin, I’m sorry to say. Bates’s widow took it very well, considerin’ how onreasonable some women are. Course, the passengers made a collection for her. Tottled up poor Tom, they did, and paid for him at the rate of eightpence a pound. As she very properly remarked, it isn’t every widow that can say of her late husband that he was worth his weight in copper.”
The young man offered his cigar-case, and the driver, with a dexterous scoop, took the whole of the contents and dropped them into one of his enormous pockets.
“It’s the outside passengers that suffer most,” the driver went on. “You recollect that case of a gen’leman on the box-seat a year ago this very day? Don’t say you never ’eerd tell of him! He belonged to a banking firm in Lombard Street, and he started, just as you might, from this very spot, cheerful and warm and as pleased with himself as anybody could wish to be. Talked a bit at first, but before we were ten miles out he had left off, and when we got twenty miles out I gave him a jerk with the butt end of my whip like this, and— What do you think?”
“I should imagine that he resented the impertinence.”
“He might have done all that you say,” remarked the driver, slapping one of the horses, “only he was froze. Froze stiff.”
“Bless my soul!” cried the young man. “What a shocking end!”
“That wasn’t the end, bless you. Tried all we knew to bring back his circulation, but nothing seemed any use, and it wasn’t until we got to a oast-house and got the hop-driers to put him in the oven—”
“Hops in December?”
“It was a late year,” said the driver calmly. “Everything were behindhand. But what I was going to say was this. You’ve got a box-seat. There’s a gen’leman in there drinking his second cup, with something in it, and he’s a good-natured chap, and he’s willing to change his inside seat for yours. Say the word, and it’s done!”