“It’s a lark, mates,” said he; “the lady’s to pay me two shillings extra for letting her pull me.”

“Two shillings?” said I.  “I only promised you one.”

“That would be for pulling me a little way,” he said; “but you pulled me all the way back, and I couldn’t do it for less than two shillings.”

Jone now came up and got out quick.

“What’s the meaning of all this, Pomona?” said he.

“Meaning?” said I.  “Look at that dilapidated old bag of bones.  He wasn’t fit to pull me, and so I thought it would be fun to pull him; but, of course, I didn’t know when I turned the corner I would be here at the stand.”

Jone paid the men, including the two extra shillings, and when we went up to our room he said, “The next time we go out in two bath-chairs, I am going to have a chain fastened to yours, and I’ll have hold of the other end of it.”

Letter Number Eighteen

BUXTON

I have begun to take the baths.  There really is so little to do in this place that I couldn’t help it, and so, while Jone was off tending to his hot soaks, I thought I might as well try the thing myself.  At any rate it would fill up the time when I was alone.  I find I like this sort of bathing very much, and I wish I had begun it before.  It reminds me of a kind of medicine for colds that you used to make for me, madam, when I first came to the canal-boat.  It had lemons and sugar in it, and it was so good I remember I used to think that I would like to go into a lingering consumption, so that I could have it three times a day, until I finally passed away like a lily on a snowbank.

Jone’s been going about a good deal in a bath-chair, and doesn’t mind my walking alongside of him.  He says it makes him feel easier in his mind, on the whole.

Mr. Poplington came two or three days ago, and he is stopping at our hotel.  We three have hired a carriage together two or three times and have taken drives into, the country.  Once we went to an inn, the Cat and Fiddle, about five miles away, on a high bit of ground called Axe Edge.  It is said to be the highest tavern in England, and it’s lucky that it is, for that’s the only recommendation it’s got.  The sign in front of the house has on it a cat on its hind-legs playing a fiddle, with a look on its face as if it was saying, “It’s pretty poor, but it’s the best I can do for you.”

Inside is another painting of a cat playing a fiddle, and truly that one might be saying, “Ha!  Ha!  You thought that that picture on the sign was the worst picture you ever saw in your life, but now you see how you are mistaken.”

Up on that high place you get the rain fresher than you do in Buxton, because it hasn’t gone so far through the air, and it’s mixed with more chilly winds than anywhere else in England, I should say.  But everybody is bound to go to the Cat and Fiddle at least once, and we are glad we have been there, and that it is over.  I like the places near the town a great deal better, and some of them are very pretty.  One day we two and Mr. Poplington took a ride on top of a stage to see Haddon Hall and Chatsworth.